The co-main event of UFC 278 was a bit of a weird one with Luke Rockhold making his return after 3 years away from competition to take on former title challenger and number 6 ranked lightweight Paulo Costa. Both fighters came into fight week with a lot of questions surrounding them for a variety of reasons. Rockhold had been away from the sport for so long and was coming back down to 185 lbs where he once held the title. He was supposed to return last year, but was forced out due to an injury. No one was sure exactly what kind of shape we would see Luke in and what his motivations were for returning. There were some rumors that he wasn't really training all that hard or taking Costa seriously, so expectations for his performance were pretty low for me in general. I thought he represented himself well, but I'll get more into that later. Costa had just as many questions as his behavior has gotten very strange since losing his title shot against Israel Adesanya. There were a lot of excuses after that loss, which isn't uncommon in the fight game, but everything about it was just so strange. He became increasingly bizarre on social media and then he had the weird situation with missing weight and basically just declining to try and make weight against Marvin Vettori. Costa kind of feels like a wild card in that he could still be a dangerous fighter in this division, but he doesn't feel reliable enough to actually put himself in a position to do so. I have a lot to say about this fight, so let's just get right into it.
We'll start with Paulo Costa since he did pick up the win. I sort of have mixed feelings on how Costa performed. On one hand, I don't think he looked that great and thought he should have been able to finish Luke. On the other, I think any win at this stage of his career would have been good for Costa. It was an underrated talking point coming into this fight, but Paulo Costa hadn't won a fight since 2019. He wasn't himself and gotten beaten up pretty badly by Israel Adesanya in their fight and his weird thing with the weight really over shadowed a mediocre performance against Marvin Vettori. He didn't look horrible against Vettori, but he still wasn't the version of Costa that we saw rise to the title picture. I think this was a similar version to that fighter, but he did make weight, so that is at least a step. I don't want to take away from what Costa did though because there was a lot of good things. He still looked powerful and he was landing with solid volume when the fight was standing. What stood out to me the most was the fact that Costa actually looked pretty solid on the ground. He was on top of Rockhold and was advancing position and doing damage down there. That isn't really something we see from Costa very often, so it was just nice to know that he has that in his game if he were to ever actually need it. I'm not going to harp too much on him slowing down as clearly the elevation in Salt Lake City was taking it's toll on a lot of the fighters. Costa doesn't have a history of cardio issues, so I'm not going to make a big deal of it unless it becomes more of a trend. It just seemed to me like Costa should have been able to finish Rockhold at some point. Luke was so gassed that he was basically hunched over trying to get his wind back for the final two rounds and Costa still went to decision with him. There was just kind of something that didn't seem quite right with Costa. It felt like the Costa who was fighting Johnny Hendricks, Uriah Hall, and Yoel Romero finds the knockout there. All things considered, just getting back in the win column was the most important thing for Costa here and he did that. He can now focus on stringing some wins together and inserting himself back into the title conversation.
Trying to predict what could be next for Costa requires getting into the minds of the UFC brass a little more than normal. Costa isn't exactly a reliable fighter, so it doesn't really feel like they would want to put him in a main event type scenario. I just don't think they really trust Costa to show up ready to go and actually make the weight. On one of the episode's of The MMA Hour last week (I think it was the Wednesday version with the Rockhold interview) Ariel said that Costa feels like the kind of fighter who finishes out his contract and then ends up fighting on some random card somewhere and that couldn't be more correct. I could easily envision a scenario where Costa is fighting against a retired NFL defensive end on the undercard of a Jake Paul event or something in the next 2 years. All of this is to say that I don't really think the Robert Whittaker fight is in the cards for him. Whittaker is a guy who the company relies on to headline Fight Nights and generally fight in important matchups. Even though the fight would make sense and is one of the only fresh matchups available to Whittaker regardless of the outcome of his fight with Vettori in a couple of weeks, I just don't think the UFC trusts Costa with that opportunity. I think it is more likely that Costa ends up fighting someone below him in the rankings. The Darren Till fight would be fun and is a matchup that I think would fit what both are looking for, but I don't know that matching up two unreliable fighters is a great idea from a business stand point. I think maybe a matchup with Kelvin Gastelum or Andre Muniz would make some sense. The UFC seems to want to really push Muniz somewhat quickly, potentially even having him be the next title challenger should Israel Adesanya defeat Alex Pereira. I don't think there would be a better opportunity to do that than to have give him the opportunity to defeat Paulo Costa. I would be satisfied if that were indeed the fight that we got to see.
I don't really know where to start with Luke Rockhold. At the end of the day, this is a wins and losses business and he lost a unanimous 30-27. However, I feel like boiling it down to just that misses the point for Luke. I really had no idea what to expect out of Luke Rockhold coming into this fight. By this point, even if you weren't a fan at the time, you know that Luke was the former middle weight champion, so we know that those high level skills were still in there, at least somewhat. However, the last time we saw him, he looked to be a shell of himself. He was clearly on a decline and had fallen into a stretch where he was being knocked out over and over again. He went up in weight and then got knocked out again before walking away and it seemed like he had closed the door on his MMA career. Then last November, he was booked to fight Sean Strickland, but was forced to pull out of the fight with a back injury. It seemed then that Luke's age had just caught up with him and that he wasn't really in a position to fight. Fast forward to this fight week and Luke seemed to be in decent shape physically, but the questions about his chin still loomed large. Add into that the comments from Michael Bisping that seemed to question how hard Luke was going in training and I was just so unsure of what version of Luke we would get. All in all, I thought Luke held his own in there. Only 2 fights ago, Paulo Costa was an undefeated title challenger who is built like The Incredible Hulk. This was an almost 38 year old Luke Rockhold who hadn't competed in 3 years and had suffered a long list of injuries after years of intense training at AKA. Even though Costa's stock has dropped over the last couple of years, he was still the number 6 guy in the entire division. As the fight was winding down, I was honestly thinking to myself that I wouldn't mind seeing Luke fight again against someone a little lower or just outside the rankings. I wish we would have gotten the opportunity to see Luke fight at a normal elevation just to see what he looked like with any gas left in the tank beyond the first round. He took a ton of damage in the fight, but he never truly got knocked down despite being hurt a few times. That is honestly a lot more than what could have been said about his chin when he walked away from the sport a few years ago. I thought his offense honestly looked pretty decent. His left kick was always his best weapon, at least in my opinion, and he was blasting Costa to the body time and time again. Given Costa's own cardio problem in the fight, I honestly thought he may drop him with one of those kicks at one point. Luke looked to have the power in his hands as well as he hurt Costa with a couple of straight lefts too. Unfortunately, the first round on his back zapped all of the gas out of Luke's tank and he was running on fumes the rest of the way. The strikes he could throw looked pretty solid, but he just wasn't able to maintain any consistent output because he was exhausted. Unfortunately we didn't get to see Luke from top position either as that has always been the best spot for him. I would have liked to see how he looked there just to see how much he truly had left, but all we got was the last 10 seconds where he rubbed his bloody nose all over Costa's face, which is such a Luke Rockhold thing to do. It's hard to say Rockhold "fought well" in a traditional sense, but given all of the circumstances surrounding him coming into this fight, I think that was a performance that Luke should be proud of.
After the fight, Luke announced that he was retiring when he spoke to Joe Rogan. Since I don't have to talk about another opponent for him, I'm going to take that space to talk about how I felt in the moment. I had never really been a huge fan of Luke's and that was largely what his character was designed to do, so it worked on the younger version of myself. Michael Bisping was also one of my favorite fighters at the time, so that only made things worse. Luke played the arrogant, attractive, rich guy heel character that is similar to the original Hunter Hearst Helmsley character in WWE and what MJF is doing in AEW right now. He did this very well and it was a character that did hold some degree of truth to what Luke was actually like. He did ask that woman on the dating show if she spit or swallowed so, it wasn't all an act. He couldn't tell DC that he loved him on the desk that one time, which even as someone who didn't like him at the time, I thought that moment was pretty funny. I'm not someone who verbalizes their emotions well, so I related to him in that moment. As he said in his interview last week with Ariel Helwani, his time away from the sport had a long overlap with the COVID-19 pandemic and that allowed him to really disappear for awhile. When he came back to do some media for the Strickland fight, he just seemed different to me. It just seemed like Luke had done some maturing in that time and it really came through in that original interview with Ariel all those months ago (the fight was supposed to be in November, so it would've been around that time). I don't know if he just dropped the gimmick or if he actually just grew as a person (likely some combination of both), but he just seemed so different and a lot more genuine. Now, I am older and have also grown as a person since the last time we saw Luke fight, so maybe my different perspective on life has just changed my outlook on him as well. As the fight was playing out, I found myself actually rooting for Luke for the first time maybe in his entire career. As the fight was happening, it almost started to feel like a movie. Luke was so tired and had basically nothing left from the second round on, but he was fighting with so much heart. It felt like a warrior who knew he couldn't win and knew it was going to be his last battle, but he was just going to go out on his shield and it actually made me emotional in the moment. He could barely stand up straight because he was so tired and then he would fire off like 3 body kicks in a row with his leg with the big sleeve on it from all of the injuries. Having him say "fuck you" to Costa and then fire straight left hands right into his chin felt like I was watching something scripted. It really didn't feel like real life. It was like Luke was about to fall over one second, but then he would muster up a little bit of energy and land a couple really hard strikes and he somehow did that the rest of the way while somehow having his chin hold up for the entire fight. It was just so crazy that someone who was generally disliked for so much of his career had the entire crowd behind him because he was fighting his heart out even though he basically had nothing left to give. To see someone who is truly a legend of the sport get to have their moment with all of the fans behind them like that was just incredible. Luke was typically on the wrong side of a lot of boos in his career, but seeing him turn baby face right at the end like that was just special. Of course, he ends the last few seconds on top and rubs the blood all over Costa's face was just sort of the perfect way for such a weird fight to end. To see someone who, again, had played the arrogant, couldn't be bothered type of guy for so long display actual human emotions during the Joe Rogan interview just struck me as so powerful in the moment. For Luke to throw all of that stuff away and just be in the moment and articulate how appreciative he was and how much all of this has meant to him all of this time was just captivating. Seeing him cry honestly almost made me cry just because he was finally letting it all go. You knew he was done because all of what we just saw was him emptying the tank and he truly had nothing left to give. Honestly, if he hadn't made the joke about being old, he might have gotten a tear out of me. I hope he looks back on the fight with pride because I was truly proud of him. Going out there and fighting with that much heart in a matchup that stacked so much against him. Then having his cardio fail him and to not quit on himself... That's a true warrior. I really believe that fight and interview will go on my list MMA moments that I'll never forget. Luke deserved to have his moment in front of the fans after all he's done for MMA and I'm glad the crowd recognized the significance of what was happening and gave him the ovation that he had earned. What a moment. Just to think that he would be one upped by Leon Edwards not too long after is crazy and made for a very memorable night.
What do you guys think? How do you grade their performances? Who should Costa fight next? What is your favorite Luke Rockhold moment? Leave any and all thoughts and comments below. Thanks for reading and have a good one.
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