Ladies and Gentlemen, on the eve of his upcoming Defense of his Heavyweight Title against Gabriel Gonzaga, I present to you three time Heavyweight Champion, Two Time Lightheavyweight champion, and UFC hall of Famer:
Randy Couture
http://www.sherdog.com/fightfinder/f...?fighterID=166
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Couture
Call him
Captain America, call him
The Natural, or simply refer to him as I do, as
God and suspect that his left ear will eventually burst and give birth to the messiah.
Randy got his start as a wrestler, I don't know much about his high school career, but I'll go out on a limb and say it was pretty damn good. After High School Randy served in the Army from 1982-1988, where he contiued wrestling, and did a few Boxing matches, which might have been part of the spark for him wanting to fight MMA.
After the Army Randy went to Oklahoma State, where he was a 3 time All American, coming up second in 1991 and 1992, losing in 92 to none other than
Mark Kerr, fellow future MMA champion. Also winning championships that year were
Kevin Randleman another future MMA champion and
Kurt Angle future Olympic gold medalist, a very good year for American wrestling and for MMA.
Randy losing the 91 NCAA 190lb title to Paul Keysaw
While Randy was a very accomplished Folkstyle wrestler, where he really shined was as a Greco Roman wrestler, winning 3 national titles in 1990, 1993, and 1997, the first two at 198lbs and the third at 213lbs. Randy was also a 2 time Olympic team alternate.
Now, onto Randy the MMA fighter. Randy is one of the few guys who actually got his start fighting in the UFC instead of a lower level promotion, winning the Heavyweight tournament at UFC 13.
Randy was one of the original members of
Team Questhttp://www.tqfc.com/ a group of wrestlers turned MMA fighters, with the most notable members being
Dan Henderson, Matt Lindland, and Randy
http://www.danhenderson.com/pictures...pening%201.JPG
Three bad mother fuckers with fucked up ears, with each guy being at worst a top three guy in their respective weightclass (Dan at 205, Matt at 185, and Randy at HW)
Next came the first time the world learned that you never bet against Couture, you just don't do it, when he beat the undefeated and seemingly invincible young Brazillian Vitor Belfort, who was tearing through everything in front of him like a buzzsaw.
Highlight of Vitor Belfort around this time
Randy ground Vitor down using his typical style of "Dirty Boxing" a style of mixing standing wrestling positioning and grips with punches which Randy was one of the pioneers of using, basically holding and hitting, along with his unreal takedowns, and punishing ground and pound.
Next came his first Title fight, against
Maurice Smith, a great kickboxer who was a pioneer for strikers learning to defend the takedown and keep the fight standing. Smith had won the title by defeating
Mark Coleman a bigger and more highly decorated wrestler than Randy. This fight is again proof that you don't bet against Couture, it also to me is a defining moment for Randy, as he proved he was able to parlay his already amazing wrestling into MMA better than other amazing wrestlers, by focusing on striking, submission defense, and most importantly
conditoning, and gamplaning.
At this point Randy left the UFC to fight for two Japanese organizations, Vale Tudo Japan and RINGS, where he would record his first two losses, and show his newness to submissions although to be fair RINGS had highly restrictive rules which didn't allow Randy to fight to the best of his ability, namely no punching the head of a grounded opponent, Randy's bread and butter.
After racking up some impressive wins in the Rings King of Kings 2000 tournament, This was the second King of Kings tournament with the 1999 version being won by Randy's Teammate Dan Henderson. The 2000 version included Fedor, Ricardo Arona, Anontonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Babalu, Jeremy Horn, and Valentijn Overeem, who eventually put Randy out of the tournament with a Guillotine choke.
Randy fighting in RINGS
vs Jeremy Horn
vs Overeem
Interestingly enough, between rounds of the tournament, Randy went back to the UFC to win back his HW title which he was stripped of for leaving the organization and losing, by defeating
Kevin Randleman, one of the most naturally gifted (alot of which appears to have been wasted) MMA fighters and another wrestler who was as good or better than Randy, at least in Folkstyle where he won 2 NCAA titles with second place finish, he never went on to compete in the international styles though and Randy was the better Greco Roman wrestler. But again, Randy showed that he was better able to use his wrestling in MMA better than other wrestlers who were as good or better than him.
Highlight of Randleman, "The Monster"
Once Randy was back in the UFC, he would defend his belt twice in two great fights against
Pedro Rizzo a Brazillian fighter who started in the bare knuckle Vale Tudo fights in Brazil, trained by Marco Ruas, the prototypical Brazillian Muay Thai mixed with Jiu Jitsu fighter, who Rizzo took after, with a great deal of success. Rizzo was also coming off of a badass KO of
Josh Barnett.
Pedro Rizzo fights
http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/Pedro+Rizzo/video/x1e7i0_pedro-rizzo-vs-michael-tielrooy-val_extreme VS Michael Tielrooy
http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/Pedro+Rizzo/video/xjgrp_pedro-rizzo-vs-vernon-white-wvc-2_extreme VS Vernon White
http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/Pedro+Rizzo/video/xdzk7_pedro-rizzo-vs-josh-barnett-ufc-30_sport VS Josh Barnett
http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/Pedro+Rizzo/video/xkczu_pedro-rizzo-vs-dan-severn VS Dan Severn
http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/Pedro+Rizzo/video/xmxg7_roman-zentsov-vs-pedro-rizzo_extreme Recently getting his own head removed by Roman Zentsov
Rizzo Highlight
Ok, got off on a little tangent about Rizzo there, but oh well.
Randy would then go on to lose to
Josh Barnett and Ricco Rodriguez, which is why many people think he will lose to Gonzaga, since he is also a bigger submission based grappler, the same as Barnett and Ricco, its certainly a valid point but I don't see it happening, Randy is such a smarter fighter nowadays.
The move to 205
The loses to bigger grapplers and the general increasing size of MMA Heavyweights ment that it was time for Randy to compete against people more his size, the lightheavyweight division.
The first Chuck Fight
http://www.guba.com/watch/3000009743
Everybody seemed to think that Randy was past his prime and that Chuck would simply walk through him.
Randy once again proved you never bet against him when he was matched up for the first of 3 fights with Chuck Liddell, all great fights, and all championship fights.
The first Chuck fight was really the introduction of the modern Randy Couture, he came out with the perfect gameplan, actually outstruck Chuck Liddell on the feet, and was able to box his way into the clinch, get the takedown, and finally hold Chuck Down long enough to pound him out for the TKO.
Randy was now the interim 205 champion in the UFC, since Tito Ortiz refused to defend the belt against Chuck, but now Tito would be forced to face Couture to unify the belts.
The Tito Fight
http://video.google.com/videohosted?...=ortiz+couture part 1/4
part 2/4
part 3/4
part 4/4
Randy basically schooled Tito for 25 minutes, outstriking Tito, Taking Tito down at will, and being in better shape, even at one point
holding down Tito and literally spanking his ass to mock him.
Next came the rematch with Vitor, which ended on a weird note, with Vitor landing a punch that cut Randy's eyelid, forcing the fight to be stopped by the doctors. A shitty way to have to lose the title, but those are the breaks.
In the rubbermatch Randy would give us some of the most iconic images in MMA history, thanks to his white shorts and glove tape turning red from the blood of Vitor, who was cut open after being dumped on the ground and elbowed and punched repeatedly, with Randy winning back the belt.
Chuck 2, Mike Van Arsdale, Chuck 3
Randy vs Liddell 2
In between these fights Randy would submit excellent wrestler and old school guy Mike Van Arsdale, in a great matchup of high level wrestling.
Randy vs Liddell 3
Retirement
After the 3rd Chuck fight, Randy would announce his retirement, after giving the fans every ounce of himself up to the age of 42.
here's a corny but good HL that came out during the retirement
http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/randy+couture/video/xuilq_a-farewell-to-captain-america_extreme
One of the signs that Randy was not really going to stay retired was his grappling match with Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza, one of the 3 best sport grapplers in the world.
Jacare Highlight
Randy vs Jacare fucked up auido and not the whole fight, but the match was pretty damn boring
http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/couture+jacare/video/x1mq0f_randy-couture-vs-ronaldo-jacare-sou_sport
Jacare was all defense while standing, avoiding the takedown, and then Randy was all defense once the match hit the ground when Jacare pulled guard.
While the match pretty much sucked, it would be like a top triathlete retireing, entering the tour de france, and tieing for the win.
The comback
It was soon announced that Randy would be coming back, this time as a heavyweight again, and fighting for the title, against Tim Sylvia. Alot of people once again wrote Couture off as old and wased up, along with far too small.
Couture vs Syliva
http://video.google.com/videohosted?...couture+sylvia
The doubters were once more sat down.
The fight was unbelievable, Randy came right out and put Sylvia on his ass with a big right hand, and then never let up the entire fight, one of the most one sided 5 round fights ever fought, with Randy never backing off.
Highlight of retirement and comeback
http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/randy+couture/video/x2fg8x_randy-couture-highlight-road-to-the_extreme
General Highlights
Gonzaga
Gonzaga ruined the plans of a Randy vs CroCop title fight by doing, well this
Randy actually predicted the Gonzaga win and said that CroCop would be the preferable match up to him.
The animated recap (must see)
Back to Randy
Randy has recently left Team Quest, although they still remain on good terms, first to open Legends gym in LA with Bas Rutten and Eddie Bravo, and then to open his own line of gyms across the country, and his own fight team in Vegas. It seems like everybody is wanting to train with Randy these days, with the newest recruit being Wanderlei Silva
Prediction
