Paulo Costa may have delivered a lackluster performance against Sean Strickland at UFC 302, but the Brazilian is making up for it with his social media posts. Recently, the 33-year-old posted a hilarious Instagram update comparing Strickland’s fighting stance to ‘Machhio’s’ posture in the noted movie ‘The Karate Kid’. Costa also highlighted one of Strickland’s moves which got him convinced that ‘Tarzan’ was probably possessed by Machhio during their UFC 302 encounter.
Like several other UFC middleweights, Costa found that Strickland was extremely hard to hit during a fight. The combination of Strickland’s ‘Philly shell defense’ and swift head movement troubled ‘Borrachinha’ throughout the entire length of the fight. Which is why the Brazilian hilariously accused his American rival of “fooling” him with his ‘The Karate Kid’s’ Machhio-like stance.
Costa also detailed that Strickland’s flying push kick in the ending seconds of the fight clarified his doubts about Strickland being some reincarnation of Machhio. The caption to his post read,
“Fu*k @SStricklandMMA Mtfk you fool me. I didn’t know you’re karate ni*u until I saw that kick at 5 seconds to finish the last round. I gonna to learn these moves with you at training mtfk”
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It’s quite apparent that Costa wants to train with Strickland for his future encounters. At the same time, ‘Tarzan’ has a habit of providing scathing replies to the ones who deride him. However, his reception of Costa’s post differed starkly from his usual ways.
Sean Strickland’s reply indicates that he will take Paulo Costa into his camp
Strickland realized that Costa wasn’t trying to deride him, instead, he was just being funny. The former middleweight champ’s reply to the post even showed that he was ready to match Costa’s tune. Strickland penned,
“All camp the only thing I did was Tie chee… found my center.”
‘Tai Chi’ is the genre of martial arts that Machhio from ‘The Karate Kid’ used to train in. Costa’s analysis claims that Strickland has gained quite some control over it after a full camp. On the other hand, ‘Tarzan’s’ reply also indicates that he would have no issues in taking Costa into his camp and helping him learn this technique. However, it will be interesting to witness if ‘Borrachinha’ manages to gain the same kind of mastery over the art as Strickland after training with him in the future.
