Paulo Costa has been on the outs with the UFC for quite a while. The Brazilian middleweight has been ‘benched’ for his unwillingness to take Marvin Vettori bout seriously and miss weight by an entire division.
Costa is infamous for his twitter presence. Previously he shared an article containing the allegations Dana White’s mother had made about him and asked his 185k followers if they were true.
But Costa had buyer’s remorse regarding this particular jibe at UFC president Dana White and promptly deleted it.
Since then he’s followed up on agitating the UFC by sharing the following photoshop of Dana White along with UFC strawweight champion Rose Namajunas.
Of course Costa didn’t include the original picture.
ESPN Brazil even thought the image was real.
White appeared to be irked immediately. In the past Brendan Schaub had made comments inferring that White had had a romantic relationship with Schaub’s ex girlfriend Ronda Rousey during the height of her infamy. In addition to these comments Joshua Fabia and Diego Sanchez also alleged that White was having inappropriate relations with female UFC athletes.
This likely prompted White to message Costa and request the photoshopped image be deleted.
Costa obliged White – but with a twist. Instead of the now deleted tweet the picture is commemorated for Costa’s 185k followers as his twitter header.
Costa has been trying to antagonize the UFC for months. In addition to Dana White comments he’s attempted to engage a number of UFC middleweights in social media beefs so that they would agree to a bout with him.
Recently Combate exclusively announced Costa would be returning against Rockhold – but they appear to be the only outlet that shared these news. It’s also possible the two would face each other at light heavyweight considering UFC is reluctant to let Costa return to middleweight after his weight cut gaffe.