Melquizael Costa decided to eliminate a rough weight cut going forward with his career and feels confident that his performances at UFC 334 will leave fans “amazed” this Saturday in New York, where he battles Jared Gordon at Madison Square Garden.
Costa won six in a row at featherweight before losing a decision to Arnold Allen this past May, a run that included finishes over the likes of Dan Ige, Morgan Charriere and Andre Fili. Now at 155 pounds, Costa feels “really excited” to enter the cage and compete after a more intense training camp.
“I’m either going to knock him out or submit him, man,” Costa told MMA Fighting. “I don’t see this fight going to the scorecards. Somebody’s going to pay for this, brother. Not somebody, Gordon. He’s screwed, brother. Sorry, Gordon, but you’re going to get beat up bad [laughs].”
New York’s own Gordon has fought under the UFC banner for nearly a decade, winning half of his 18 octagon appearances, but walks to the eight-sided cage at UFC 334 on a two-fight skid against Rafa Garcia and Jim Miller.
“He’s a very dangerous guy,” Costa said. “I see a lot of people saying the UFC gave me a gift, but I think the UFC gave me a high-level fight. I was either going to face a ranked fighter or a tough veteran, and that’s exactly what happened. Jared Gordon is a badass. He’s got very heavy hands and mixes things up really well with his ground game. If you look at the veterans out there, brother, those guys are teaching lessons. I’m training to go out there and throw hands, to go to war with him, especially because he’s fighting in his hometown. On top of going up against him, I’ll also be going up against the motivation the crowd is going to give him.”
Costa was very active in the UFC despite his rough cut to 145 pounds, going 5-0 in a span of 12 months before losing to Allen in a UFC main event. Fighting at lightweight is nothing new to the Brazilian, who stepped on the scale multiple times against opponents that size during his pre-UFC career and has also lost a pair of fights at 155 pounds in the octagon, and Costa believes that should allow him to be even more active in the cage.
“I’m already thinking big,” Costa said. “I’m going for a war, but if the fight ends quickly, I’m already ready for December, to close out the year at T-Mobile [at UFC 335]. I want to work, brother.
“I built my career at lightweight,” he continued. “Nothing that’s going to happen will surprise me. You guys will be surprised. You’re going to be amazed. I was a lightweight fighting at featherweight. That’s the truth. I was suffering way too much. Now I’m going to show up in great shape, and my weight cut will be much more manageable. I’m feeling great, really excited about my debut.
“[Weight cut] was something that really held me back in fights. The UFC has been booking fights on short notice lately, and in many of them I didn’t even have much of a game plan. It was just about cutting weight, and then we’d see what happened in the fight. Now I’m able to think things through better, work more on the technical side, get more repetitions in, and that’s allowing me to really enjoy even my sparring sessions. When my focus was mostly on cardio to lose weight, I was getting injured a lot because the intensity was so high.”
A professional MMA fighter since 2014, the 30-year-old sees UFC gold on the horizon at lightweight.
“I don’t care what people think,” Costa said. “My mindset, my focus, is one thing: I’m going to be a UFC champion. That’s a fact to me. It’s not a dream, it’s a fact. I’m going to be a UFC champion. I thought it would be at featherweight, but I realized that’s not the case, I’ll do it at lightweight. I have a longer road ahead of me now, but I have a life goal of retiring by 35. I’m not in a rush to become champion by the end of the year, you know? I want to make money and beat people up.”