Paulo Costa\u2019s decision to move up to light heavyweight and face undefeated Azamat Murzakanov next at UFC 327, which goes down April 11 in Miami, is part of a project to \u201cmake history\u201d and become a UFC champion in two weight classes.<\/p>\n
Costa moved his camp to Largo, Fla., to have veteran trainer Andre Benkei as his head coach at UFC Gym Largo. Surrounded by a new group of trainers and partners, with his brother Carlos Costa assisting from afar, \u201cBorrachinha\u201d decided to pass on an offer to face middleweight Brunno Ferreira in March to go up to 205 pounds and take on Murzakanov.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Borrachinha\u2019 is focused on becoming world champion,\u201d Benkei told MMA Fighting. \u201cHe wants to become world champion within a year. The guy is giving up everything, he doesn\u2019t even live at home. His mind is ready for this now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Benkei praises Ferreira as \u201can excellent fighter,\u201d but \u201cthat fight wouldn\u2019t add anything to the project of becoming champion.\u201d Costa won his last fight with a decision over Roman Kopylov in July 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Costa] didn\u2019t even sign the contract,\u201d Benkei said. \u201cHe only agreed to it, discussed the possibility, because [the UFC] didn\u2019t give us any option in the top 10 or top 5. And on the day he said, \u2018Alright, let\u2019s look at this fight,\u2019 two top-ranked fighters got booked. If those guys weren\u2019t available to us, how did they end up fighting? He was a bit upset with the UFC.
\u201cThen the UFC tried to adjust things and said, \u2018Look, let\u2019s do this. You want to fight at 205? We\u2019ll give you a chance. If you win this fight, you get a top-5 spot in both divisions and you can move forward in both and go for the title in either one if you want.\u2019 That\u2019s a challenge worth taking because I think he\u2019s ready. \u2018Borrachinha\u2019 has that eye of the tiger now, so let\u2019s go. That\u2019s why he moved up. We\u2019re moving up to become champion in both divisions. To make history. That\u2019s what he wants to do. [He said] \u2019I don\u2019t just want to win, I want to make history.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Benkei has worked with a long list of legends throughout decades as a MMA coach, but said he\u2019s never trained a gifted athlete like Costa.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe impressed me a lot physically. Truly impressive,\u201d Benkei said. \u201cI\u2019ve never trained a guy with a physical reaction like his. I had never seen it. Extremely fast in his responses, you know? What would take me six months, a year to develop with others, I get with him in two or three months. We didn\u2019t do a full camp, only a partial one because we were heading into a fight and I didn\u2019t even reach the final phase of accelerating the athlete. And even without that phase he already had astonishing speed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t believe anyone matches his strength [at 185], and at light heavyweight, honestly, maybe not either. This kid is unbelievably strong. That\u2019s feedback from the wrestlers training with him, usually from the higher weight class, and from Yuri, who\u2019s a monster on the ground. He\u2019s almost impossible to hold. The guy\u2019s hips weigh a ton. He gained serious strength. And most importantly, his speed is impressive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Costa is training with high-level wrestlers in Florida, having former D1 All-American Nik Fekete and ADCC gold medalist Yuri Simoes as part of the coaching staff. A jiu-jitsu back belt with most of his MMA wins coming by knockout, the light heavyweight version of \u201cBorrachinha\u201d is dropping strikers in the gym.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn one of his sparring sessions with a kickboxing kid, he threw a jab and a kick from the same side so fast \u2014 without power, he didn\u2019t want to hurt or knock the guy out \u2014 but there was no way around it, it was an instant flash knockdown,\u201d Benkel said. \u201cThe guy went out because it lands so fast you don\u2019t even see it, you know? Imagine if he really puts pressure on. I think he\u2019s going to have huge success at 205.\u201d<\/p>\n
The doors are still open to return to middleweight, Benkei said. In fact, the plan is to call out a specific middleweight after UFC 327, but he doesn\u2019t plan on revealing the name until his hand is raised in Miami. Murzakanov is the task ahead, a 16-0 middleweight with 12 knockouts to his credit, but Benkei sees the Brazilian being the more versatile of the two.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a tank. He has good speed but is short for the weight class. That won\u2019t affect us because, in terms of speed, we\u2019ll be equal or \u2018Borrachinha\u2019 will even have the advantage. [Murzakanov] has very heavy hands, but he\u2019s one-dimensional. He relies too much on that swing. Most of his knockouts, everything he does, is built around that swing. High-quality work on speed and movement will frustrate him a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paulo Costa\u2019s decision to move up to light heavyweight and face undefeated Azamat Murzakanov next at UFC 327,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-471405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471405","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=471405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}