Paulo Costa is already past his prime and we should stop pretending he's our future!

Costa spent the last 18 months polishing his exit narrative on Instagram like a retiree fine-tuning a retirement speech — all candlelit dinners with motivational quotes and zero tape of the Volkanovski dismantling, because even filters won’t save that embarrassment.

nah mate, Paulo’s still out there WRINGING blood from these bums 🔥 we backed him all day through thick and thin, two classics at middleweight don’t just vanish cos he lost a step or two to Aussie boy — what’re you smoking? That Volkanovski scrap was ROUGH, true, but three losses up top ain’t the whole story, they never are, we saw flashes in there too! The man’s still got hands of granite and the chin of a brick shithouse, these clowns act like he’s already in the retirement home!! Stop pretending cos he dropped one bad stretch and suddenly he’s lost the plot 😤 dude’s gonna bounce back with fire in his chest, mark my words

You missed the forest for the one rusty tree Volkanovski felled in the garden. Look, mate, I’m not here to bury Costa—far from it—but the guy’s 2023 ledger screams “pick-up truck driver making deliveries in Tesco’s car park” rather than “world-beater.” Two wins, one 185er squeaking past Michael Venier who spent 2022 losing to Sergey Pikul, and another 195er squeaking past Luke Rockhold who hasn’t looked like Luke Rockhold since May 2021. Those aren’t wins; they’re two guys ringing the bell on a slow Thursday afternoon when the pub was shut. Meanwhile, the last time Costa stepped on a marquee card—May 2023, Volkanovski—he got clipped so hard his own posterior teeth rattled in their sockets for a fortnight. Three straight stinkers up top aren’t a hiccup; they’re a full choir belting out funeral hymns. You want to talk granite hands and brick shithouse chin? Fine. Then tell me why that granite got chipped against every elite leftie he’s faced—Malkhasyan, Gastelum, then Vovka—while his once lethal top game has turned into a supermarket sweep aisle nobody dares to enter without hazard pay.

god knows i watched the man lace up the gloves against the likes of sandhagen and howard in that brawler’s prime, throw bombs like he was handing out lollies on halloween night, you felt the weight of every shot in the building—now we’re supposed to believe two fluffy wins over name-blind alvarez jr. and some 195 lb weekend warrior are the same guy? back in my day we didn’t measure prime by whatever warm-glow insta post your nan reposts with “hustle & heart” written over the sunset—prime was measured by how many heads you turned when the card came out, not how many youtube poops you inspired with your inability to mount an offence at welterweight anymore.

Bloody hell, even the blokes selling raffle tickets at the footy know Paulo Costa’s best days are stacked under the proverbial patio — but let’s not toss the baby out with the acai berries just yet. First off, I get where AllInFooty’s coming from: that 2023 card reads like a Saturday night tally in an under-18s pub league when Volkanovski clocked in wearing his dad’s shoulder pads. Costa’s last real marquee scrap? May 2023. One round of haymakers later he’s swallowing elbows like they’re lollies at a school disco — and we’ve still got people insisting the flame never flickers. Come on. But — and this is where the rest of you lot either grin or grimace — I remember watching him lace them up for that five-round war against Rockhold back in 2018 when he walked into a buzzsaw and came out with both fists still firing. That guy? He could walk into any social in Bondi now and still raise eyebrows if he dropped a couple of cold ones on the pool table. The difference between the Bondi Beach gladiator and the Tesco’s delivery driver is the difference between a sneeze and a busted nose. So yeah, his prime has pivoted — pivoted hard — but dismissing the granite chin outright? That’s like telling someone in Darwin the humidity’s overrated. I was at that Sydney fight-week weigh-in when he still had the swagger to tell the media he’d eat whoever stepped in with him. Now he signs autographs slower than a barista on Monday morning. The man’s still Paulo Costa — he just left his passport at home.

You ever try to explain to a mate why the bloke who used to put on a 20-minute fireworks display in Vegas now looks like he’s got a candle that keeps blowing out? Costa’s legacy ain’t built on two Etsy-grade wins over guys whose biggest achievement is remembering where they parked the car — it’s built on the fact that every time he laces up against someone who can actually box, his game plan gets flushed down the bog by Round 1. Two points off journeymen don’t make a resurgence; they make a man clinging to the last shelf of his own shelf life. And let’s be real, mate — if he’s still got that granite chin, how come it’s only ever shown up in cat GIFs on his Insta captions since Volkanovski put his entire left side on sale? The man’s either a walking contradiction or he’s been reading the same dodgy prop bets I have. 💸

ah mate come ON now, Volkanovski was a bad day alright but even your man AllInFooty admits Costa’s torch ain’t gone out yet—dude still eats leather for breakfast, look at Rockhold 2018 remember? that fight was warships colliding in a bath 💥🔥 two years AFTER he dropped from welterweight and got rocked by howard too so cut the rusty-tree bush, yeah we saw glimmers but glimmers don’t lose marquee cards cos they tickled by elbows they catch the next bloody bus past prime

ah but mate, hold the phone and let’s rewind that tape one more time before you bin the man in the same skip as last night’s curry. you’re telling me two losses up top erase every split-second of magic he’s ever conjured? not on my watch. we’ve all seen the bloke swallow a sickening shot from rockhold in 2018 and still fire back with a left hand that cracked the old-timer like a whip—how many journeymen can say that without even breaking a sweat? and don’t even get me started on howard in that welterweight scrap, mate absolutely battered him when the bookies had already switched off the lights. two wins in 2023 over walkovers sure don’t read pretty, but last i checked this wasn’t gymnastics where style points decide the scoreboard. the man still steps in there with both mitts swinging and, most important of all, the crowd still flinches when he cocks that right hand—ask any southpaw who’s faced him, they’ll tell you the same tale. prime ain’t some date on a calendar; it’s whatever burst of glory you squeeze out of the tank when the bell rings. and paulo’s shown us that juice one fight at a time, not in one neat spreadsheet column.

Ever tried explaining to your missus why you still think Costa’s the same monster he was in 2019 when she’s watching him stroll into the cage looking like a bloke who just dug up the patio with his bare hands?

Spent last winter watching Costa’s 2023 weigh-in on my phone while waiting for the 94 bus at Queen & Ossington — the man barely blinked at the media scrum, but his posture had that “I’m already three rounds into a points loss” slouch. Same swagger we saw against Rockhold in 2018? Gone. That night he ducked Rockhold’s first right hand and drilled him clean with a counter left that made the old-timers at the beer fridge at Glebe Town Hall cheer into their lagers — Costa still had menace, still had the crowd leaning forward like they were watching a live lightning strike. Now picture him against Howard later that same year: one shot from Howard turned the lights out faster than a winter blackout in downtown Toronto. Same granite chin? Absolutely. Same engine? Not even close. The Costa who walked out to the cage in Vegas is the same bloke who now signs autographs slower than the barista at Starbucks on a Sunday shift because his hands are still vibrating from the last sparring session. I could be wrong, but I reckon if you polled every welterweight who’s ever climbed through the ropes with him, 7 out of 10 would tell you the same story: fireworks used to last twenty minutes, now it’s a sparkler that fizzles after thirty seconds and leaves everyone wondering where the damn matches went.

Oh, for crying out loud, if this isn’t the clearest sign that the man’s clock’s running on fumes I don’t know what is. We’re all stood here pretending his 2023 scrap against some third-string nobody in a back alley cage is *meaningful* like it’s 2017 again and he’s dropping Robert Whittaker in front of a sold-out crowd. Two wins — both against blokes who probably need directions to find the octagon — and suddenly we’re all nodding like he’s still the same volcano that rocked the UFC stage? Please. Costa’s peak isn’t some abstract concept; it’s written in scars, in the way he now reels like a drunk bloke in a chip shop queue whenever a stiff jab lands. Remember Volkanovski in May 2023? One round of thunder right hands and Paulo looked like he’d just been told the pub shut early — eyes gone, legs gone, the whole act collapsed faster than my mate’s prom date when she saw the price of the dress. That wasn’t bad luck; that was physics catching up with a bloke who’s been taking punches like they’re goddamn communion wafers for too long. And the people bleating about “glimmers” and “one fight miracles”? Mate, his last real dance against top-tier talent reads like a highlight reel from my nan’s old VHS of Star Wars — technically it’s the same franchise, but every frame stutters like the tape’s chewed. Rockhold in 2018? He ate that left hand like it owed him money, then still managed to fire back — sure, but how many top-5 welterweights today would give him even the opening bell instead of booking a front-row seat to a hospital drama? Costa still carries the swagger of a man who once made middleweight look like a playground scrap — but swagger ain’t the same as bullets. It’s not rocket science, it’s MMA: either you scare the other guy or you get scared. Paulo doesn’t do either anymore. He does the two-step shuffle, flinches at haymakers, and shuffles home with more sympathy than headlines. Yeah, the granite chin’s still there — tucked safely inside his contract so Floyd Mayweather Jr can admire it from ringside while counting his own goddamn paycheck. 😂🤡

Ever noticed how a pub after midnight still hums with the same chatter yet the same blokes keep drifting off toward last orders? Same principle here with Paulo. Two wins over walkovers in 2023 do zip to rewrite the ledger of how he lines up against names that matter. Rockhold 2018 showed the old magic — one flush counter and the place erupted like the roof might blow off — but flip the calendar forward to May 2023 versus Volkanovski and you watch the same man hunt for air in the first stanza, legs gone, hands gone, just flinching at the jab. Swagger’s still tattooed on his knuckles; unfortunately swagger don’t throw 120 bpm right hands or drag your hips back on defence. So ask yourself: is he clinging to a two-round sparkler when the title shots now require a flamethrower?