Randy Couture needs no introduction. He is a true pioneer of Mixed Martial Arts, the first-ever two-division UFC Champion and a decorated Army veteran. Not to mention a Hollywood movie star. “The Natural” was gracious with his time, and an excerpt of our conversation is transcribed below. It was an honor to interview a living legend.


GrapplerMag: Everyone talks about the trilogy with Chuck Liddell. Obviously that's a big part of both of your careers. I want to talk about 2007, UFC 68 and UFC 74. You fought Tim Sylvia, a literal giant, and dominated him to win the Heavyweight Championship in March. Then you defend against Gabriel Gonzaga that August right after he headkicked Mirko Cro Cop into oblivion. What are your memories from that year or that time period? 


Randy Couture: Uh, that was an interesting year for sure. I had been pursuing the Fedor Emelianenko fight. I sat down with Dana and the powers that be and kind of expressed that this was the one fight I wanted. They had him ranked above me as the number-one fighter in the world. Look, this is the guy I want to fight. And they had set about trying to make that fight happen, couldn't do it, couldn't come to an agreement. There were some other issues with the company at that time, too, that I knew weren't straight. 

So I basically attempted to walk away from the UFC and [tried to] make that fight happen on my own. Injunctions and a whole bunch of money and lawyers and a bunch of crap for thirteen months. I finally just, I had to come to the realization the fight wasn't going to happen and came back to the UFC. And that put me in the fight with [Brock] Lesnar. 

But I fought Tim and Gabe, both great fights. I had been going through a divorce and walked away from the sport for about twelve months while the divorce settled and just didn't feel like myself. That's when the second and third Chuck Liddell fights happened and the first season of The Ultimate Fighter. There was a lot going on, certainly for me personally. The dust settled on all of that. 

And I had poked Dana right after Tim Sylvia had fought Jeff Monson in Sacramento. I had commentated that fight and it was a very uneventful fight. Let's just put it that way. So I had made an offhanded comment to Dana. ‘Oh man, that was like watching paint dry. I could beat either one of those guys.’ 

And he didn't text me back. He called me. He’s like, ‘Are you serious?’ And I'm like, ‘Yeah, I could beat either one of those guys.’ So, the Tim Sylvia fight was signed three weeks later after my offhanded comment. 





GM: Wow.


RC: Tim was huge. I mean, six feet, eight inches [tall]. I had trained a little bit with Tim up at Team Quest a couple years before that before he was ever the heavyweight champ. So it had to have been three or four years before that. So technically and tactically, I kind of knew my way around Tim and where Tim was at, had watched him fight, celebrated his victory over Rico Rodriguez to win the heavyweight championship, and knew Tim pretty well. He was a good guy and he'd actually stayed in my house for a couple of weeks when he came up to Team Quest to train. So we knew each other well. 

I also knew that that little bit right there was going to be an issue for him. Psychologically, he was one of those guys that kind of had to poke you and talk smack about you and kind of create some anger and animosity to be able to get in the right headspace to go out and fight and do what you had to do. And I knew he was going to have trouble doing that with me because we were friends. 

And obviously, I have a wrestler's mindset. I had to wrestle some of my best friends for the spot on the team. One of us was going home pissed off. That was a normal part of our sport in wrestling. So I had a little bit different attitude about that than a lot of fighters have. I knew that would be a psychological hurdle for Tim. 

But at the end of the day, I still had to solve the problems, right? Here's this six-foot-eight guy with a giant, long jab, you know, great footwork, good power, knockout power. He knocked a lot of guys out. I had to kind of make friends with that and figure out how to address this guy and solve the problem of a six-foot-eight monster like that. 

But that crowd in Ohio that night was amazing. The biggest crowd we'd had in North America at almost 23,000 [spectators] at that time. And I don't think after that first punch in the first twenty seconds, they sat. They didn't sit the rest of the night and just scream their asses off. I will never forget that last ten-second countdown from that flight. It was amazing. 


GM: It's actually super interesting that you say that about psychologically knowing that about Tim Sylvia, because he's very visibly frustrated the entire fight. You can see in his face, it’s super noticeable. He's not having a good time.


RC: Pat Miletich was a good friend and we had a very fun, you know, serious, but also fun rivalry between Miletich Fighting Systems and Team Quest. And like I said, Tim had come out and trained with us, getting ready for one of his fights and trying to work on some of his wrestling. We knew Pat and he had a great team, Matt Hughes and a whole bunch of really good guys in that gym, as did we at Team Quest. 

So, it was a fun rivalry, and Pat told me after the fact that Tim going into the fifth round didn't realize it was even the fifth. He was still shaken from that opening punch and didn't really know where he was at, which was a bit of a shock, but he did grow a twin on his eye from that first punch. 




Tim Kline

Brandon Ibarra

Brandon attended the College of Journalism at the University of Florida. He has one stripe on his white belt.