Paulo Costa vs. Marvin Vettori Bumped Once Again, Now Takes Place At Light Heavyweight

Mandatory Credit: Josh Hedges - Zuffa LLC

This weekend's UFC Vegas 41 headliner has once more been bumped up in weight class -- with middleweight contenders, Paulo Costa and Marvin Vettori now slated to feature in a light heavyweight pairing on Saturday night at the UFC Apex facility. 

Initially, both Costa and Vettori had penned their respective contracts to compete at the 186lbs middleweight limit for this weekend's headliner, until earlier this week, the bout was moved to a special catchweight of 195lbs, when Costa confirmed that he was unable to make the middleweight limit, and was sitting in the region of 211lbs during his media availability on Wednesday.

With both parties agreeing to a special catchweight bout at 195lbs, Costa was forced to forfeit 20% of his overall fight purse to Vettori, however, just over a day later following the change in weight for the headliner, we've got another change to the main event bout.

Per a report initially from Sherdog.com and then Yahoo! Sports reporter, Kevin Iole who spoke with the promotion's Chief Business Officer, Hunter Campbell, both Costa and Vettori have now penned new contracts to compete at UFC Vegas 41 this weekend, this time at the light heavyweight, non-championship weight limit of 206lbs. 

Returning to the Octagon for the first time since September of last year, Costa dropped a second round knockout defeat to Israel Adesanya in a middleweight title fight on 'Fight Island' at UFC 253. Following the bout, Costa revealed he had consumed an entire bottle of wine the night before the bout in a bid to help him get to sleep, a revelation that received much criticism. 

For Vettori, the Trento native saw his five-fight undefeated run halted at UFC 263 in June in his first title challenge under the organization's banner, in a second decision loss to the aforenoted common-opponent, Adesanya.