Costa which led to his worst performance in UFC

Brazilian middleweight Paulo Costa says he made a series of bad decisions the night before his first UFC title fight in September, leading to the worst performance of his MMA career.

Costa, 30, is scheduled to fight Marvin Vettori in the UFC Fight Night main event on Oct. 23. It will be his first appearance since suffering the first setback of his career, a second-round knockout loss to Israel Adesanya at UFC 253 in Abu Dhabi.

In the wake of the loss, Costa said on his YouTube channel that he consumed a bottle of wine the night before the fight in an effort to fall asleep.

In an interview with ESPN on Thursday, Costa said his first mistake the night before the fight was doing a hard training session. Costa, who cuts a lot of weight to compete in the middleweight division, said he normally doesn’t train on weigh-in day, the day before the fight, but chose to do so because there was more recovery time in Abu Dhabi due to the time difference.

“My weight cut was very difficult, but it’s always difficult,” “The problem is that in Abu Dhabi, the fight happens in the morning, not at night. So, you have one more night [of recovery]. And what happened is, after my weight cut, I recovered very well. But then I trained so hard. I was so confident, I trained hard. I trained more than recommended after a weight cut. And I think this caused a lot of problems in my body. I had a lot of cramps and I had a lot of trouble sleeping.”

Costa (13-1) went on to say that he took a supplement containing ginger, which was supposed to help relieve his cramps, but made him feel more awake. He said it’s not unusual for him to consume small amounts of wine at night to fall asleep, and as the night dragged on and he still couldn’t sleep, he finally decided to use that as a last resort.

“I had decided to fight. I wasn’t going to let this fight go down,” Costa said. “After the physical therapist left my room, I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I tried melatonin, but it didn’t work. Sometimes, I have a glass of wine when I feel a lot of stress, it helped a little bit, but only one glass, when I have time to get it out of my body. But it was too late. I was desperate to fall asleep.”

Costa said he is not trying to make excuses for the defeat, as he said it was his decision to go ahead with the fight and he did so thinking he would win. He also said he has no regrets about talking about the bottle of wine, even though some UFC athletes have mocked the revelation, including Adesanya.

Despite the loss, Costa remains the UFC’s No. 3 ranked middleweight. He believes a win over Vettori, who also lost in a title fight to Adesanya in June, will give him another championship fight.