Paulo Costa says he will retire before he turns 36 and plans on donating his brain for research when he passes away.
Costa is currently undefeated in MMA with a record of 13-0 and is the number one contender at middleweight. It is expected he will battle Israel Adesanya for the belt later this year.
Although the 28-year-old is still young in his MMA career he is worried about what his health will be like when he retires.
“We know that the brain is made up of cells that no longer regenerate, we are only losing them,” Costa said to AG Fight (translated by Google Translate). “As the age advances, this amount decreases, so reflex is slow, speech becomes bad, forgetfulness. From time to time I research [about it]. There is even Rose, from the Gracie family, campaigning for brain donation, fighters, for research on this. I want to make my career as fast as possible, conquer everything, and I don’t want to fight after the age of 36. I would give my brain with pleasure.”
For Paulo Costa, he is very worried about the health of his brain. But, he says there are ways to preserve it like sparring with bigger gloves and avoid unnecessary shots to the head.
“This is a very serious thing because we don’t have data to know how much it can affect each one. Each one will have symptoms and will react differently with that amount of strokes,” he said. “What you can do is do a type of fight that minimizes the blows to the head. In training maybe even wearing protective equipment, like a helmet. This can mitigate a lot. Wearing big gloves, I never do sparring with MMA gloves, always with 16-ounce gloves to avoid blows to the head.
“I don’t think I will stop doing sparring. But there is no other way, it is a price that our profession pays”, he concluded.
