Oliveira Slams Costa: ‘He Got Finished By A White Belt’

Charles Oliveira is not happy with fellow countryman Paulo Costa and he’s here to put “Borrachinha” in his place.

After failing to make weight for his lightweight title defense against Justin Gaethje back at UFC 274 Oliveira caught significant flack around the MMA community. The Brazilian champion had only missed weight by .5 pounds, but it was the first time a UFC champion missed weight on the day of weigh ins and was stripped of their title. Luckily for Oliveira, he was still able to defeat Gaethje via first-round submission and line himself up for a chance to take his title back his next time around.

One of the people to speak out about Oliveira’s small weight miss was none other than Costa, who seems to poke the bear quite a bit these days. Costa has been on a steady decline in the UFC’s middleweight division after starting his UFC career with a 5-0 record and that includes an atrocious weight miss for his last fight with Marvin Vettori back in Oct. 2021. “Borrachinha” is the last person to be talking about missing weight, especially when it comes to a world-class fighter like Oliveira.

In a recent interview with ESPN Brazil, Oliveira discussed Costa’s remarks about his UFC 274 scale fail and what he thinks of “Borrachinha” as a whole. The former UFC lightweight champion didn’t hold anything back in his brutal assessment, even pointing out Costa’s loss to current UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya.

“Borrachinha is doing his thing,” said Oliveira. “Doing a lot of bullsh*t and talking sh*t about other fighters. A guy who doesn’t make weight by 6-7kg wanting to talk sh*t on social media. And since he talked about me, I’m going to talk about him as well. He doesn’t know sh*t about my weight and about me. And keeps talking sh*t on Twitter.”

“I think we have to look at ourselves and then think about talking about others,” he added. “But he keeps talking about a lot of nonsense and doesn’t do anything, right? He arrived there as a black belt “big guy” but got finished by a white belt.”

This isn’t the first time a Brazilian fighter has spoken poorly of Costa over the past few months. Just a few weeks ago former UFC light heavyweight champion Glover Teixeira talked about Costa being “corrupted” and how he cares more about social media followers than winning fights. That may be true, but Costa is still employed by UFC and has done a decent enough job in creating a following on Twitter and Instagram to help promote his fights.

Costa, who is currently riding a two-fight losing streak, will have an opportunity to silence the naysayers when he welcomes former UFC middleweight champion Luke Rockhold back to the cage at UFC 278 this August. It will be Costa’s chance to prove he’s been working on his game and that he’s ready to take his UFC career to the next level.

That is, of course, if he can show up on weight.