We are now near the end of Round 2 in our series on steroids with no mention of Paulo Costa. Why?
Why is that, you ask?
Well, I was hoping to save him for last. However, now seems like a decent time to talk about it since he recently featured heavily in the news.
What happened this week with Paulo Costa at UFC 226? An opponent missed weight, but Paulo didn’t make weight by even 1/4lb and still took the fight!! Why would he do this?! It doesn’t matter if his opponent missed weight – nothing is guaranteeing him a win or not being cut by Dana White without pay!
But I think you already have your mind up that he used steroids, right?
Well, I don’t know for sure. But let’s look at the circumstantial evidence!!
Paulo Costa came from Brazil weighing about 185lbs to fight at middleweight in UFC 226 of July 2018.
He was on TRT (testosterone replacement therapy), making his ‘natural’ testosterone probably around 500 ng/dl or more! After USADA caught up with him, he had to stop using TRT and showed up for his next fight a little lighter… Maybe 185lbs still isn’t soft enough, though, as Dana White has accused him of ‘juicing.’ He doesn’t seem any different from before his removal from TRT other than being much skinnier – not more extensive. His natural testosterone before TRT was probably around 700 ng/dl. He didn’t have to cut weight for his first fight since his natural testosterone level was so high; he could eat whatever he wanted and hardly lose any weight!!!
It’s important to note that the UFC uses 4-hour weigh-ins – which means you are not cutting weight after waking up at 4 am on weigh-in the day!! This makes it even more suspicious of Paulo Costa not making weight. Also, they still allow IV use for rehydration, which is WAY too lenient of a policy right now! The IV ban should be implemented or at least the rehydration period extended to 30minutes after weighing in… But I digress.
As far as evidence goes, we can see that his testes (testosterone production factories) must still be working well, and he wasn’t TRTing at UFC 226. So he was ‘natural’ and big enough to fight in the UFC – naturally!
There’s a discussion about him using steroids in the bodybuilding world, but I haven’t been able to find any concrete evidence either way. However, there is speculation that he might have started on them when he first entered the sport of weightlifting.
So what do you think? The evidence weighs slightly in favor of steroid use. But we’ll leave it up to you to decide if Paulo Costa used steroids or not.
