Paulo Costa is heading to the light heavyweight division, and he looks to hand one of the division\u2019s surging contenders his first loss.<\/p>\n
Multiple people with knowledge of the promotion\u2019s plans confirmed to MMA Fighting that Costa is set to face Azamat Murzakanov at UFC 327. The event takes place April 11 and is expected to take place in Miami, although the UFC has yet to announced. Laerte Viana<\/a> was first to report the booking on Twitter.<\/p>\n Murzakanov is a perfect 16-0, including a 6-0 run in the UFC. \u201cThe Professional\u201d makes his first appearance in 2026 coming off of a 2-0 campaign in 2025 where he stopped Aleksandar Rakic and Brendson Ribeiro in the first round. Murzakanov currently sits at No. 8 in the MMA Fighting Global Rankings<\/a> at 205 pounds.<\/p>\n Costa, a one-time UFC title challenger, heads up a weight class after getting back on track with a decision win over Roman Kopylov at UFC 318 this past July. The win snapped a two-fight losing skid for Costa, who is 2-4 in his past six overall \u2014 including losses to Sean Strickland, Robert Whittaker, and Israel Adesanya in his lone title fight. Costa\u2019s lone light heavyweight appearance was due to weight-cutting issues ahead of his UFC Vegas 41 main event bout in October 2021, losing the bout via decision.<\/p>\n Guilherme Cruz contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paulo Costa is heading to the light heavyweight division, and he looks to hand one of the division\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-407823","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}