MMA legend Dan Hardy is picking ‘The Eraser’ to earn the underdog victory this weekend at UFC 302 over former middleweight champion Sean Strickland.

Known as one of the best minds in MMA, Dan Hardy certainly knows his stuff when it comes to breaking down the biggest fights and ahead of the UFC 302 PPV this weekend, ‘The Outlaw’ is siding with one key underdog to earn the upset victory.

Dan Hardy backs Paulo Costa to earn the underdog win at UFC 302

Breaking down the entire main card for UFC 302 via his official YouTube channel, former UFC fighter turned commentator Dan Hardy revealed that he’s backing fan-favorite Brazilian brawler Paulo Costa to earn the underdog win over former champion Sean Strickland.

At the time of writing, Strickland is the slight betting favorite over Costa, with a whopping 78% of Tapology Community Picks opting to side with the former middleweight king; so why is Dan Hardy backing Costa to upset the apple cart in New Jersey?

The two key components of Hardy’s pick were the kicking game of Costa and the durability of ‘The Eraser’ to walk through Strickland’s most powerful punches.

“The thing with Paulo Costa, I don’t allow myself to credit him with that [high] level of fight IQ, [as] I feel like he’s effective because of his physicality and aggression… I don’t think we’re going to see a great deal of kicking from Strickland unless he’s attacking the lead leg but then because of the way that Strickland kicks, Costa can bowl him over aggression.”

“I think Paulo Costa’s kicking game is going to cause problems,” explained Hardy, before identifying that because of Strickland’s style and “the way he shells up, the body is the obvious target – and I think Paulo Costa can do well to work the body.”

“Against [Marvin] Vettori, he went 41% to the body and against [Luke] Rockhold, he went 45% to the body – but then against [Robert] Whittaker he went 29% to the legs; that shows an interesting shift… I do feel like I’m underestimating Paulo Costa over five rounds though.”

Hardy also acknowledged that he doesn’t think that Strickland possesses the power to knock out such a behemoth as Costa, whose only KO/TKO loss in his career came at the hands of arguably the best striker in the division, Israel Adesanya.

“Even if Strickland landed that exact same punch that he landed on Adesanya, I don’t think that would have the same effect as it did on Costa,” shared the fan-favorite pundit.

“I feel like Strickland could put Adesanya on the back foot because he did land a few good right hands before he knocked him down. Whereas I feel like Strickland could hit Paulo Costa and Costa’s not going to have that same type of respect for him, which means that Strickland’s either going to have to walk him down to make Paulo throw and gas out, or wrestle.”

Whilst Hardy noted that there’s likely going to be some contention somewhere in the fight, he ultimately backed Costa to earn a hard-fought decision victory.

“Definitely something mad is going to happen… I’ll go Paulo Costa, [and] I’ll go Paulo Costa by decision, call me crazy.”

Both UFC 302 fighters are looking to bounce back into the win column

The co-main event slot of this weekend’s PPV is an enormous opportunity for either Costa or Strickland to bounce back into both the win column, and title picture at 185lbs.

Paulo Costa sat out for the entirety of 2023, having had two fights with Ikram Aliskerov and Khamzat Chimaev fell through, only to suffer a razor-close decision loss to Robert Whittaker earlier this year.

In turn, Strickland had one of the most successful years out of anyone on the UFC roster in 2023: Defeating Nassourdine Imavov, Abus Magomedov, and Israel Adesanya en route to earning the middleweight title.

Yet it was a short-lived reign at the top of the 185lb tree for ‘Tarzan’, having dropped the belt to South African superstar Dricus du Plessis back in January.

With Dricus du Plessis and Adesanya expected to face off sometime in the late-summer or Fall, the winner of Strickland vs Costa could indeed land themselves a back-up spot for that presumed title fight in Australia at UFC 305.

Costa vs Strickland is the co-main event of UFC 302, set to go down on June 1 live from the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.