Jose Aldo criticizes Paulo Costa over recent weight miss: “It’s a lack of respect”

Former UFC featherweight champion and current bantamweight contender Jose Aldo criticized Paulo Costa over his recent weight miss.

Costa was supposed to fight Marvin Vettori last month in a middleweight bout that headlined UFC Vegas 41, but Costa showed up to fight week heavy. The fight was later turned into a light heavyweight contest, while Vettori won by decision. Although it was an awesome fight, the fact that Costa missed weight put a bit of a damper on his performance. Speaking to MMAFighting.com’s Guilherme Cruz in a recent interview, Aldo panned his fellow Brazilian for showing up to fight Vettori heavy and off weight.

“If you don’t hit the weight, it’s a lack of respect for your opponent, the event, and the fans who are waiting for it. That’s how I grew up, that’s how it made me the athlete I am today. For me, it was a lack of respect. Even though he is Brazilian, he can be my friend, anything, but if he asked me, I would say the same thing. The opponent spends, I don’t know, two, three months preparing for a fight at a weight, going on a diet, when the week of the fight comes, he starts to see a buzz of ‘ah, the guy won’t be able to beat the weight, I don’t know what’s happening,’ then you start to take your focus off the fight, you start not only thinking about weight loss, but whether the fight is going to happen, whether the guy is going to beat the weight, whether he’s going to go up or down,” Aldo said (via AG Fight).

“Even if there is a fine and he passes 50% of his contract to the opponent, but that gets in the way. It disturbs (the fighter), the fans who are waiting, you journalists, it disturbs everyone. You sleep with a thing and wake up early in the morning already changed again, fight canceled, then fight is confirmed. If I were a promoter I would be very pissed. There’s no way you can come tomorrow and want to talk to me and ask for a salary increase when you can’t even fulfill your contract, right?”

Do you agree with the criticism from Jose Aldo towards Paulo Costa?