Paulo Costa UFC 318 Win Breakdown from Fighter Previously Slated For Roman Kopylov Bout
Paulo Costa impressed a former UFC vet with his recent win over Roman Kopylov with this current Oktagon MMA fighter being previously scheduled to throwdown with the latter years ago while contracted to the UFC.
Krzysztof Jotko was the fighter in question and the tenured mixed martial artist discussed this ahead of his eventual win over Marek Mazuch at Oktagon 74 on August 9th. Jotko appeared on Bowks Talking Bouts and discussed that Paulo Costa performance.
While Jotko has been outside of the UFC for a notable enough time period, the 35-year-old is still high up in the UFC’s all-time takedown defense percentiles for middleweights. Jotko at one point was even number one in that regard a few years back. But the fact that Jotko is still in the top 10 there for takedown defense among middleweight fighters is certainly an impressive feat by all accounts.
When asked if that was something that was a particular point of pride for him still being within the top 10 of middleweight fighters who’ve exhibited great takedown defense throughout UFC history, Jotko said,
“It just give me like a mental confidence. Like I know now like I can risk heavy kicks and heavy everything where I want and I know if they going to take me down, I know I’m going to get up. Maybe he don’t even take me down. So I have like a different confidence now.”
“Like I can use all my weapons and don’t be scared about takedown because I know I’m going to get up. I know he going to have very, very big problem to take me down. So I’m good. I feel really, really good for this fight, and this cash [is] going to be in my pocket.”
Paulo Costa vs. Roman Kopylov breakdown from jotko
In referencing that takedown defense statistic for UFC middleweights, it was brought up to Jotko that the person who currently is in the number one spot is Roman Kopylov. The Polish pugilist was actually supposed to have a fight with Kopylov, circa April 2019 until the latter had to pullout of the Jotko bout with an injury per Tapology.
Tying that into UFC 318-related fights with Kopylov fighting Paulo Costa, when breaking down his thoughts on that particular fight, Jotko stated,
“No, I think the Costa was in amazing shape to this fight, and he nice play the Kopylov, you know. He almost finished him. I see this fight really, really good. So I think Costa was in really [great] shape and really, really had a really good day on this day. This day of fight, you know.”
