Paulo Costa is at odds with the UFC over the last fight of his current deal with the organization, and former champion Magomed Ankalaev has decided to volunteer for the task.<\/p>\n
Costa knocked out previously undefeated Azamat Murzakanov at light heavyweight to put himself in an interesting position with only one bout left in his UFC contract, but it seems that the conversations with the promotion are not advancing in the direction he was hoping for.<\/p>\n
On a two-fight winning streak now over Roman Kopylov and Murzakanov in two weight classes, Costa posted a \u201csimple and clean\u201d message to the UFC on social media.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have 1 fight left,\u201d Costa wrote. \u201cOn my contract the purse is set for 3 rounds, not 5. I\u2019m asking for the 3-round fight that was already agreed on contract. It can be anyone on the UFC LHW roaster.\u201d<\/p>\n
Costa said UFC\u2019s chief business officer Hunter Campbell has \u201cthree options\u201d to choose from, one being releasing him from his contract \u201cnow.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ok, I\u2019m making this public and clear:
I have 1 fight left. On my contract The purse is set for 3 rounds, not 5. I\u2019m asking for the 3-round fight that was already agreed on contract . It can be anyone on the UFC LHW roster.<\/p>\n
I think Hunter has 3 options now:
A) Give me that last 3-round fight (I\u2019ll take any opponent).
B) Give me a 5-round fight at LHW against anyone in 6 weeks. I\u2019ll take it, BUT raise my purse accordingly. That\u2019s the minimum that\u2019s fair, right?
C) Release me from my contract now.
Simple and clean. I hope everyone understands.
9-18-26
Las Vegas, Nevada
Sincerely,
Paulo Costa.<\/p>\n
It remains undecided what the UFC will do at the top of the light heavyweight division. Carlos Ulberg suffered a knee injury during his championship victory over Jiri Prochazka and remains sidelined until 2027, and Costa has campaigned for a fight for the interim belt if offered enough money to re-sign with the promotion.<\/p>\n
Ankalaev, who could be standing across the cage against Costa for that belt after finishing Bogdan Guskov this past July, responded to his post.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou beat me, you become a free agent and make millions,\u201d Ankalaev wrote. \u201cI beat you, everybody expected me to beat you anyway. You have nothing to lose. I\u2019m your get-out-of-jail-free card. Let\u2019s fight.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paulo Costa is at odds with the UFC over the last fight of his current deal with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":904271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":["post-904270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904270","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=904270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/904271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}