{"id":413705,"date":"2026-01-15T02:59:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T02:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/413705\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T02:59:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T02:59:07","slug":"paulo-costa-making-light-heavyweight-debut-against-azamat-murzakanov-at-ufc-327","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/413705\/","title":{"rendered":"Paulo Costa Making Light Heavyweight Debut Against Azamat Murzakanov At UFC 327"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Despite a win in his last outing, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmanews.com\/tag\/paulo-costa\" class=\"tag-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Paulo Costa<\/a> will be taking on a new challenge &#8212; a new weight class &#8212; in his next bout.<\/p>\n<p>Per a report from <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/laertevianamma\/status\/2011234125974552940?s=20\" rel=\"nofollow\">Laerte Viana<\/a>, the former UFC middleweight title challenger will be moving up to light heavyweight.<\/p>\n<p>Costa&#8217;s first fight at the weight class will be quite the test, taking on the undefeated <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmanews.com\/tag\/azamat-murzakanov\" class=\"tag-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Azamat Murzakanov<\/a> at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmanews.com\/tag\/ufc-327\" class=\"tag-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">UFC 327<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Costa had been scheduled to compete at UFC 326 against Brunno Ferriera. He&#8217;s since been replaced in the bout by Gregory &#8220;Robocop&#8221; Rodrigues.<\/p>\n<p>Paulo Costa vs. Azamat Murzanakov Booked For UFC 327<\/p>\n<p>Costa has gone 2-4 in the UFC, with a number of withdrawals and re-bookings, since unsuccessfully challenging Israel Adesanya for the UFC middleweight title at UFC 253.<\/p>\n<p>After missing all of 2023, Costa dropped decisions to Robert Whittaker and Sean Strickland in 2024. He, however, successfully returned at UFC 318 with a decision win over Roman Kopylov.<\/p>\n<p>Murzakanov is 16-0 in the sport, including a 6-0 UFC record since arriving from Dana White&#8217;s Contender Series. Murzakanov scored the biggest win of his career at UFC 321 in October, knocking out Aleksandar Rakic.<\/p>\n<p>UFC 327 takes place on April 11 in Miami.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite a win in his last outing, Paulo Costa will be taking on a new challenge &#8212; a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,19961,786,785,6401,85,205749],"class_list":{"0":"post-413705","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-azamat-murzakanov","11":"tag-fighting","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-paulo-costa","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-ufc-327"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}