It’s pretty simple; ignore the physical appearance and listen to the message. It’s no surprise that fighters like King of the Cage fighter Melvin Costa have inked themselves with white power tattoos in an attempt to gain attention from both supporters and protesters of his cliche white power argument. Costa, like most (if not all) white power individuals are looking for someone to influence, someone to infuriate. David Holthouse from the Southern Povery Law Center wrote an article titled “The Last Word” in which he gives Costa more exposure from his interview with Sam Caplan last year. FightOpinion’s Zach Arnold posted up the article on his blog earlier today.

Amongst many topics in the interview, Costa goes on to explain that the swastika tattoo on his chest does have some meaning.

“A swastika, as far as I hold it true to my own, it stands for the purity of my people’s blood … I do believe in the purity, security, and the survival of the white race.”

That’s quite the compelling argument that we’ve all heard a thousand times before. Tell us something new and intellectual, Mr. Costa. Perhaps you should explain a bit deeper into the fact that the origin of Costa is actually Portuguese and Brazilian. Brazilians are Caucasian? According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, 49.9% of Brazilians consider themselves white due to some white ancestry.

But Costa doesn’t come off as the typical ignorant fool. He answers each of Caplan’s questions thoughtfully without making any attempt to demean other races or beliefs - believe it or not. If one were to read his interview without seeing Costa, they might picture a skinny pale student who is just a little lost in life. But Costa, only 26 years old, has spent almost half of his life, 11 years, in jail serving his time for an assortment of charges from burglary to assault.

But then again, do I care about his life in particular? Not really.

Do I ever want to see him fight? Probably not.

Costa is just another fighter who wants to leverage his physical appearance in order to gain attention from fans in MMA. Unless he does have some talent, this whole debacle won’t last long and we’ll be back to regular business as usual. But maybe you are one of those fans who want to see him go down against fighter just for the satisfaction. As for myself, I’d rather just not worry about someone just looking for attention when there’s so much more to look towards in the sport right now.

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