Melquizael Costa’s rise hasn’t been quiet. At 29, with a 25–7 record and a style that swings between knockouts and slick submissions, he’s walking into a ranked test against Dan Ige at UFC Fight Night 267 with real momentum. The betting lines say this is a step-up. His recent finish of Morgan Charriere says he’s ready for it.
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But fans don’t just study the tape. They want to know the person behind the hype. Where did ‘The Dalmatian’ come from? What shaped the fighter who is now 6-2 in the UFC? Let’s trace his roots and learn more about his story!
What is Melquizael Costa’s ethnicity and nationality?
Melquizael Costa da Conceição was born on September 14, 1996, in Porto de Moz, Brazil. That makes his nationality straightforward: Brazilian. His fighting base, Chute Boxe, also sits inside that Brazilian lineage that has produced UFC champions like Charles Oliveira and Anderson Silva.
As for ethnicity, Costa hasn’t publicly detailed his family lineage beyond being Brazilian. No interviews or official profiles break it down further, and he hasn’t framed his identity around ancestry in public. What he has repeatedly shared is how his upbringing shaped him.
In his UFC.com Q&A, Costa explained he stumbled into the gym in 2010 and got humbled fast. According to him, “I put on all the gear to train some striking and got knocked out. Then another friend told me to come train jiu-jitsu, and I didn’t know what it was. The friend was injured and said he just needed one hand to submit me, which he did. I decided that I needed to train to beat that guy.”
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Family played a role, too. In the same Q&A, Costa said his family didn’t want him to fight at first. Only his brother supported him. When his brother passed away in 2013, Costa said it hit him hard, but also gave him the strength to keep going.
His father, once skeptical because Costa was “just skinny,” later became his anchor. The UFC featherweight now calls him before every fight because he “calms me down and makes jokes,” and knows how to motivate him. Now let’s shift our focus over to his faith.
Melquizael Costa’s religion
There’s no public record of Melquizael Costa stating a specific religion. He hasn’t framed his career around faith, rituals, or religious identity in interviews or official profiles. But what he does speak about is his struggles with vitiligo, a skin condition he has dealt with for most of his life.
As he explained, “I started training but was very shy because I had been through a lot of discrimination since I was a kid and that had messed up my mind…At one point I was working in the countryside and didn’t even want to go back to the city; I was like an animal and avoided human interaction. Fighting helped me overcome all of those things, so I started training seriously and began enjoying it.”
As he heads into a ranked test against Dan Ige, that mindset matters. Ige is battle-tested, but Melquizael Costa is surging. On paper, this is where prospects get measured. In practice, it’s where the Brazilian gets to show whether the growth behind the scenes translates under bright lights!