| Couture Prepares to Climb the Mountain Again |
How many more times will we doubt Randy Couture? How many times must he beat the Tim Sylvias, Gabriel Gonzagas, Chuck Liddells, and Tito Ortizes of
the world until we say “enough”? Apparently not yet, as the UFC heavyweight champion will again be sporting the underdog role when he steps into the Octagon this Saturday to defend his title against Brock Lesnar in the main event of UFC 91.
As usual, Couture takes that role with his characteristic grace, knowing that he’s usually at his best when the odds are against him. In fact, it’s become part of the 45-year old Hall of Famer’s legend. Not that he’s banking on that legend to save him when the bell rings at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.
“I just don’t get caught up in all that stuff,” Couture told UFC.com. “I take a rational approach and I have a pretty good idea of what I’m capable of and where my strengths and weaknesses lie and I seem to be able to figure out those same things in my opponents and come up with a plan that allows me to just go out there, relax, do what I need to do, and perform. The rest of it is a bunch of hogwash basically.”
Calm, cool, and collected, it’s been business as usual the last couple of months for ‘The Natural’, a far cry from the previous year, when a contract dispute kept him out of action for what will be almost 15 months come fight night. Couture admits that when matters were at their most contentious, he thought that his UFC 74 win over Gonzaga was going to be his last fight.
“There were a couple times in there where I thought ‘you know what, this is never gonna happen, and I’m probably not gonna be fighting again,’” he said. “I was resigned to and made friends with that idea, and ultimately it was part of the impetus to seek an alternative route to get back and to fight. I realized that I could toil away in the legal system for another year and spend another wad of money and still not get to fight, so the path of least resistance and the wisest choice was to let bygones be bygones and come back.”
Couture’s return was made official in early September, and though many fighters would have panicked about getting back in fighting shape for a November 15th bout, he picked up right where he left off with his gang of top-notch fighters at the Xtreme Couture gym in Las Vegas.
“Nothing’s been tough about it actually,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed it, it’s been great to be back in training camp, and to eat and sleep training. I’ve been home a lot more and it’s been fantastic. The ten week camp has gone really, really well, and I feel great. I feel really fit and ready to peak, but I’ve reached the point where I’m tired of training and ready to fight.”
He’ll certainly have a fight on Saturday with the imposing Lesnar, a fighter whose inexperience can certainly be overshadowed by the physical tools he brings into the Octagon. Couture, one of the most astute judges of talent in the game, sees what everybody else sees…plus a little more.
“I see the same big, strong, athletic guy that you guys see, but I see a lot of inexperience,” he said. “He’s basically still a wrestler, first and foremost. He’s added a few skills from mixed martial arts to go with that wrestling base, but he still lacks a lot of the things that he needs to be a real well-rounded fighter, and I think those are things that I can exploit. I know that he’s big and he’s strong, and I know that there are a few places I don’t want to be – I certainly don’t want to be laying around underneath him, and he’s gonna come out hard and try to put me there. So I’ll be ready to deal with that and I’ve been working on that pretty diligently for ten weeks now. I’ve wrestled plenty of guys his size over the years, so I’m just as much of a threat to put him on his back and make him fight from there as he is to me. I also feel like there’s an experience factor that’s not there for him, but it doesn’t make him any less dangerous. I just have to stay composed and stay focused, move my feet – a lot – and go out and have some fun.”
Couture, a five-time UFC champion with three titles at heavyweight and two at light heavyweight, has also seen flashes of Lesnar’s temper. Of course, it’s mainly been geared at the media, but if Couture can frustrate the former NCAA Division I National wrestling champion into a mistake, it could be lights out for the big man.
“I absolutely see that,” said Couture. “From the Fedor (Emelianenko) comments in the first conference call announcing the fight, to the (ESPN) E:60 interview on TV, he has a short temper, and that’s certainly nothing you want to carry around in a fight because things happen in a fight and you’ve got to remain composed and work through them. You can’t afford to dump all that energy because there’s probably gonna be more rounds to go. I fully intend to try and frustrate him to make it as difficult for him as I can, and get him to expend that
It’s these type of breakdowns that get Couture’s competitive juices flowing, and that have allowed him to come up with the game plans that have brought him to upset victory after upset victory over the years. It’s also what he missed the most while he was gone.
“I definitely missed the competition,” he said. “That’s why I’m still doing this, because I love to compete. It’s not about accomplishing anything else or winning more titles or anything like that. It’s simply love for competition and competing in this sport.”
That’s not something that’s going to go away anytime soon. Of course having said that, Couture refuses to look past Saturday night, no matter how intriguing the heavyweight landscape may look now with the likes of Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Frank Mir, Shane Carwin, Cain Velasquez, and Junior dos Santos waiting in the wings.
“I’ll take it one fight at a time,” he said. “I feel real good right now, I’ve held up physically through training and getting ready for this fight, and now it’s time to go out and see how the performance is. After that we’ll let the dust settle and make a determination and evaluation based on that and go from there.”
And maybe next time there will be no doubters.
