It’s been more than three years since Luke Rockhold appeared on stage at a UFC press conference, but the one-time middleweight champion made up for lost time in an expletive-filled tirade aimed at opponent Paulo Costa.
Rockhold was the co-headliner at Saturday’s UFC 278,. He seized the main event title during his confrontations with Costa. At first, he accused Costa of trying to avoid the fight by doing all he could.
“This motherf****** didn’t want to take the fight in the first place,” Rockhold said. He said that the UFC forced him to accept it and then delayed it two more times, each month. You little b****, shut up.”
Costa was all smiles in response as he scoffed at Rockhold’s claims while mocking the tone of the rhetoric coming from his 37-year-old opponent.
“This guy is way too old for this type of bulls ***. Come on,” Costa said. “You are too old to say this kind of bulls***.
“He can say this bulls***. I don’t feed on an older man like he is. It doesn’t matter on the day of the fight. It doesn’t matter if we are in the same box together, me and him, and we will find out who has more energy, more power, and will win this fight .”
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UFC President Dana White dismissed a reporter’s question about whether Rockhold’s accusation was true, countering, “who gives a s***? They made it here.”
In a subsequent exchange, Costa ridiculed Rockhold’s outfit onstage and said that Rockhold was dressing like a teenager. The American Kickboxing Academy veteran fighter fired back.
“I’m old, I’m young. What am I?” Rockhold shouted. “Shut the f*** up.”
The back-and forth didn’t stop – Rockhold was there to respond to almost everything Costa said on the mic.
One particularly heated moment was when Rockhold asked Costa about his determination to prevail in spite of all odds. The ex-champ asked him how much he weighed less than 24 hours before they are set to step on the scale with a goal of hitting 186 pounds or less.
“Have any of you dealt with adversity?” Rockhold asked before making reference to Costa’s famous weight loss in his bout against Marvin Vettori. “The one time you dealt with adversity you missed weight by 20 f****** pounds.
” My question: What’s your body weight? All of us want to find out. Do you want to lose weight? Do you intend to f ****** gain weight ?”
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Costa spoke in English only during the conference and simply retorted with Rockhold, before predicting how their fight would end.
“I’m on my primetime,” he said. He said, “I’ll f*** the old man up Saturday. He is visibly uncomfortable because he knows he will face a monster. He already knows. You can see that he is uncomfortable. I will retire him on Saturday.”
After the press conference was over, Costa and Rockhold ran toward one another on stage. UFC President Dana White stood between them. However, there was no altercation as Costa said to Rockhold, “be cool”, as they met for the first-time during fight week.
The middleweights will be able to have one last staredown Friday at the ceremonial weight-ins, before finally battling in the cage at UFC 278. on Saturday.
