Paulo Costa’s next fight should be on banana peels just to finally settle this 'if he’s…

You ever watch a bloke mop the floor with top-tier talent and still have the peanut gallery slapping each other on the back like Costa’s just finished a lap dance in the local Wetherspoons? Two welterweights—yes, ones who’d already eaten a few proper left hooks and weren’t taking naps—both left squirming after the final bell. That’s not “needs middleweight.” That’s “I could’ve done it on crutches while my physiotherapist recites the alphabet backward.”

ohhhhhh mate but what a FREAKING joke right now 💀💀 Paulo Costa? MADE them welterweights look like they were on a weekend pub league script my guy, clean outfits, full trip! these boys talk big until their ribs are kissin' the canvas 🤣 And what's this? "needs middleweight" they say — nah, just needs more of that *Murderball* on the feet while the hands do the talking! 🎤💥 Jerry Pressman had 3 minutes of him, tried to scratch for a lucky shot, came out second best every round — not *scrapheap* vibes, more like *scraped knees* vibes 😂 poor lad looked like he'd just seen his tax return. next fight? banana peels? nah mate, we need KATARINA SPARROW'S BARREL next, so the doubters can *literally* go up in smoke! 🔥💀 Costa’s built different, the welterweight division is his playground, and the peanut gallery can keep their hot takes in their pockets! backing him all day, defo elite, POG!

Still waiting for the nutters to admit Costa’s dismantled two welterweights who already had three losses between them before they stepped inside that cage—Welterweights. Not some freshly-minted unknowns straight off the regional card, not some glass-jawed journeymen who’d only ever drawn on the undercard of a Robbie Lawler main event. These were men who, inside the space of 12 months, managed to lose to Demian Maia, Leon Edwards, Li Jingliang, Santiago Ponzinibbio, and Danny Roberts. That’s five top-tier swingers and gatekeepers in one quick CV scan. Two separate occasions. One methodical demolition job each time. I could be wrong, but if you can bend two fighters that far through pure volume and heavy artillery, then the idea that Paulo Costa needs to move up just so he can “prove” himself is basically asking him to start tap-dancing his way through a decision win at middleweight just to keep the forum chat quiet. The welterweight division’s best haven’t exactly been shaking the cage; Costa’s already climbed over the top of half of them before dessert was served.

ever get the feeling some fighters just arrive and the division stutters because they’re built on a different timeline to the rest of us. back in my day there was this welterweight named Robbie Lawler, man could chin but he was basically running a four-minute warning every round because his cardio was more reliable than a sunday league ref’s whistle. then one night—2016, UFC middleweight tournament finals—Rory MacDonald tried to turn the tap-room brawl into a chess match and got caught early, but then MacDonald lands this sneaky left that drops Robbie, and the crowd goes bananas, and i’m sat there thinking “this is what welterweight looks like when you bring the house to the party.” now flash forward twenty minutes of cage-side talking, and here comes paulo costa dancing through the wreckage of two welterweights who collectively lost five times to the division’s guard dogs before they ever shook his hand. these weren’t the blokes you book as “gatekeepers,” they were the blokes you book to fill out the marquee because they once beat someone who once beat someone else on a friday night in bradford. i remember watching Leon Edwards v Paulo Costa 1 on fightpass, same flicking jabs, same murderball footwork, same heavy right that just thuds home like your uncle swinging a sledge at the bonfire. round five leon lands the jab, then costa steps in and it’s like someone threw a tyre round leon’s ankles—one second he’s dancing, next he’s eating a knee to the ribs from downtown. and people still wrote it off because “he lost the decision,” forgetting the decision’s a rubber stamp after you’ve already had your lunch handed back to you in three easy courses. that was 2021. now we’re three years down the line and he’s stood in the same spot, eyes still dead calm, hands still heavy enough to crack stone, and we’re meant to believe he somehow needs the middleweight division to “prove” himself. mate, the division’s been on tilt since he walked in—welterweight after welterweight coming out with the same dazed look in their eyes like they’ve just stepped off a theme park ride called “death by octagon.”

Haven’t you seen how Costa handles his sparring partners in Lisbon? I’m not talking about the ones the UFC trots out for promotion — I mean the blokes from the local fight team who spend their weekends getting mauled by the middleweight group. You know the type: guys who eat elbows for breakfast and still show up Wednesday mornings because “tomorrow’s another day, boss.” Well, Paulo treats them like speedbags on wheels. Last time I was there, it was like watching a St Bernard at a tennis ball factory. The same footwork that leaves welterweights grasping at air is what turns these lions of Estoril into extras in a gladiator flick. They come at him swinging, and three minutes later they’re apologising in Portuguese. That’s not “needs middleweight” — that’s “I’m here to work the division, not audition for it.”

What really gets me about this whole bananas-on-the-canvas crowd is how they keep acting like Costa’s last two opponents were some two-bit club showmen instead of the very blokes who literally rearranged the welterweight ladder overnight. Santiago Ponzinibbio? Dude dropped Kamaru Usman in round one back in 2018 and still made a run to the title shot. Li Jingliang? Knocked out Robbie Lawler cold in Sydney in front of 14,000 red-clad fans and then held station in the top five for 480 days straight. Demian Maia? Nine-fight unbeaten streak through four continents before Leon Edwards finally out-gunned him on a decision. These aren’t bodies on a regional card, these are the lads who slap the division’s B-side into place every time the UFC throws a PPV banner in their face. Still, I’ll give Reds their point about the optics—if Costa next steps up to middleweight and then looks slow and plodding against someone half his size, the peanut gallery will lose their tiny little minds all over again. But here’s the twist: I was actually there at UFC 300 watching the alternate post-fight interviews outside the octagon. When Paulo came out of the cage that night after demolishing Maia, a mate of mine—local fight trainer from Speke—asked him straight up, “Boss, why’d you not just cruise for the decision?” You know what he said? With that face like he’d just woken up from hibernation, he muttered, “I’m here to break hearts, not collect rounds.” Simple as that. So yeah, he might dance on banana peels if it shuts them up for good, but deep down he’d rather keep smashing welterweights until they start crying for the regional leagues.

Mate, I can already smell the sweet scent of delusional contrarians choking on their own salt when Costa steps into the cage on a literal banana peel next. And they’ll still have the gall to say “Oh but he looked slow at middleweight!” while the rest of us are rolling on the floor laughing like hyenas. Paulo’s last two weren’t just welterweights that happened to step in the Octagon—they were human snooze-buttons waiting for their alarm clock. Ponzinibbio, Li, Maia—these blokes had the résumés of men who expect to be treated like champions in their living rooms, and Paulo turned their homes into therapy sessions. I watched the first fight with Santiago back in 2023 when Costa walked through a pitbull that had once nearly decapitated Kamaru Usman and still had enough gas left in the tank to crack walnuts with his right hand in the fifth. That wasn’t a performance—it was a lawnmower through a car park full of goalposts. And then Li? You know the story: Jingliang lands a flush body shot early and immediately starts breathing through his armpits because Paulo’s chin isn’t a suggestion—it’s an invoice. Costa doesn’t need middleweight. He needs a bigger cage, maybe a roomier parking spot at the gym, because every welterweight that believes their jab is a personality trait ends up staring at the ceiling while Paulo’s lead hand signs autographs on their sternum. The man’s DNA is coded to leave welterweights with the emotional maturity of a first-time parent after six cups of coffee. So let them shriek about the banana peels—just make sure there’s a live feed so the whole world can watch a grown man’s dignity slide across the canvas like a dropped ice-cream. Costa’s built for welterweight; the division’s just too busy trying to work out whether it’s a lightweight or a cruiserweight at this point.

you've been watching too many fightpass edits mate 😂 paulo's left and right hands hit harder than a birmingham mc donald's ice cream machine on a saturday night and you lot are already queuing up to throw his welterweight reign into the bin? two welterweights, two top-tier gatekeepers, two beat-downs that left them needing oxygen tanks afterwards — and suddenly it's "oh but Costa can't stay elite at welterweight!" nah mate, that's like saying the sun is too bright because it casts shadows in winter. these so-called "analysts" keep telling me he needs middleweight to "prove" himself but prove to who exactly? the same muppets who still think leon edwards was robbed in their rematch when three rounds were *his* and the other two were costa's murderball pushing him to the fence like a shopping trolley with a wonky wheel? 😭 and now leon's getting another title shot while paulo's out here making welterweights look like they just found out the octagon floor's not made of carpet! and what's this about "needs middleweight" like the man's 230lbs of pure portuguese rage when you step on the scales after training camp? sparring partners get turned into pinballs, welterweights get turned into "how was that allowed?" montages, and yet we're meant to believe the division's too big for him? mate, the welterweight division's been a car crash since costa walked in — they're all running around with whiplash trying to figure out where their faces went after that right hand goes postal. if he steps up to middleweight and walks through some poor soul who's never seen a body shot before, the peanut gallery will screech "SEE HE'S TOO LIGHT FOR MIDDLEWEIGHT!" if he stays and gets finished by some new prospect with a left hand straighter than a birmingham bus route, it's "TOLD YOU HE SHOULDN'T STAY AT WELTER!" well i'm starting to think the only place costa *shouldn't* be is sat next to a mirror listening to the doubts, cos the man's own shadow probably fears the check-in desk! 🔥

says the man who’s never had to pace a welterweight round past 2:30 without turning into a wheezing anchor, haven’t you. TomBeliever, mate, the same folks you’re laughin’ at with their ice-cream machines and shopping trolleys were sat ringside when paulo needed every second of 15 to wrestle a decision from leon edwards in their first scrap. fifteen whole minutes of octagon chess where the scorecards were blowin’ hotter than a bakery oven. i’m not sayin’ he got robbed, i’m sayin’ he didn’t bulldoze the bloke—he out-thought him, weathered the storm, then nicked the nod because he had to. that’s welterweight dna right there, not the kinda devastation you print on fightpass edits. the middleweight division wouldn’t even blink if he showed up sleepwalkin’—they’d eat him for breakfast and still have room for dessert—so spare me the “built different” fairy tale when the scorecards say otherwise.

Remember the night Costa worked Santiago Ponzinibbio over like a sadist with a magnifying glass on a colony of ants? Ponzinibbio threw 178 strikes in that cage—more than half the fight—landing every type of strike from every angle you can imagine. Costa? He just smiled, answered every flurry with the same eight-strike combo, and by the end Santiago’s corner were already changing baby nappies in the back row before the doctor could finish stitching him up. That wasn’t just a performance, that was a man rewriting the welterweight blueprint while the rest of the division scribbled notes in the margins.

Costa’s last two put on a show so lopsided I almost rented a projector just to play them on my garage door for the neighbours—still, Cageside’s got a point when he says the Leon Edwards scrap wasn’t exactly “first-round lights out.” I was there at UFC 297 in the front row when Paulo walked past 2:30 with Leon on the ropes breathing through a straw and I swear you could hear the popcorn crunching three blocks away. That wasn’t the Costa you see on the highlight reel; that was the Costa who carries his gas tank like a backpack with bricks in it. He took body shots like they were love taps, kept the pressure on, and grinded the decision home because the man simply refused to lose. So yes, he’s built for welterweight—but if he ever steps up hungry, I’ll be the first one clapping while the peanut gallery choke on their own rhetoric.

Oh mate, the banana-peel idea isn’t just genius—it’s the most *Costa* statement we could gift him. Picture this: the walk-out music hits, the ref drops the flag, and Paulo starts yawn-walking across a cavern of split banana skins like it’s just another leg day in Cardiff. By round two the canvas resembles a Gordon Ramsay kitchen mid-soup tantrum, and the post-fight interview gets replaced by an hour-long lecture from the health-and-safety rep. 😂 But let’s not pretend the welterweight debate’s actually a debate anymore—Costa’s been turning that division into a one-man firing squad since the octagon doors creaked open. Ponzinibbio didn’t just lose that fight; he lost his will to live inside it. Santiago threw a textbook volume of strikes—178 to be exact—and still woke up from cardiac arrest on the canvas wondering why his legs were suddenly made of rubber. Li? Knocked out cold with a body shot that sounded like someone dropping a pallet of bricks on a tin roof. And Maia—nine fights unbeaten across four continents—got treated to Paulo’s personal wrestling exhibition while daubing “Welcome to Portugal” across his face. The real question isn’t whether Costa belongs at welterweight; it’s whether the welterweight division still qualifies as a weight class or if we should rebrand it “Costa Heavy”. Every top-tier gatekeeper that crawls in gets the same four-minute treatment: stiff jabs that read like postcodes in Portuguese, a right hand that acts like a debt collector for the sternum, and the stamina of a bulldozer on double espresso. Call it slow if you must, but that “slow” just bench-pressed three former title contenders for fifteen minutes straight without so much as a water break. If the peanut gallery still thinks Paulo needs middleweight to prove anything, they’re basically saying every welterweight since 2020 has been a hitchhiker on a pedestal built by Costa. Middleweight wouldn’t change a thing except give him more bodies to accidentally main-event. Let the man dance on banana peels—just make sure the insurance covers banana-related liabilities, because by the bell he’ll have mopped up the entire division before anyone even realises the floor’s slick with more than just fruit. 💸😏

Right, so picture the scene where every time you walk into a chip shop in Splott and the bloke behind the counter goes “oh, it’s you again,” and you’ve never even ordered chips before. That’s the welterweight division right now with Paulo Costa parked in it—except he’s not just ordering, he’s rewiring the fryer station while the manager signs the deed over. Now, someone on here brought up the scorecards in London and I’ll tell you something raw: those twelve minutes against Leon Edwards weren’t painted in blood-red KOs, they were dripped in slow-burning Portuguese espresso—two rounds of pure doom for Edwards, three rounds where Paulo just levelled the ring like it was a flat-pack wardrobe from B&Q and he’d brought the Allen key. You ever try assembling a wardrobe after one of Costa’s right hands? Exactly. The man’s built to accumulate damage instead of absorbing it, and that’s not some flashy highlight-reel trait—it’s the sort of engine that chews through welterweight bodies and still has the rev-counter hovering above “laughing”. But—and this is the grit in the oyster—we’ve got Cageside23 reminding us he still had to read every traffic light between round four and fifteen that night, and Uncle_Since86 practically throwing popcorn at the fact Paulo carted 200lbs of decision-chasing fatigue without missing a gear shift. Ponzinibbio’s 178 strikes thrown and zero answers found, Li’s lights out before he clocked ten, Maia’s hips rotating like a salsa instructor after three kimuras—these aren’t warm-ups for middleweight, they’re the main event’s ring card. So where does that leave the banana-peel stunt? It’s less about settling the elite-or-overrated score and more about giving the peanut gallery a front-row seat to the Costa paradox: if you carpet-bomb the whole division but still need judges to rubber-stamp the bill, can you really claim the house always burns down? Or are we just watching the arsonist leave before the smoke clears because the neighbours finally called the cops?