Randy "The Natural" Couture | UFC Legend, 6x Champ, Army Veteran | Coffeez with Joe Shalaby Ep. 301

Joe Shalaby: The one, the only, Randy "The Natural" Couture. Randy, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Randy Couture: Thanks, Joe. Appreciate you having me on, bud.

Joe Shalaby: We just launched, uh, season 3, and, uh, it's been an absolute blessing so far. And, you know, sitting here with you just really makes me like a giggly kid, right? Uh, they were— the production crew was making fun of me just for being so giggly and, uh, just, you know, being around such greatness. Um, and it's very rare where, you know, I'll, I'll sit with someone who's just dominated a sport. You're like the Michael Jordan of UFC. Um, so we'll get into it. I ask everybody this same question when they're on the show: what's your morning routine?

Randy Couture: Morning routine? Uh, take my vitamins and supplements and get my coffee in, and That's about it. Not a big breakfast guy. Been doing the intermittent fasting since I retired from fighting in 2011. So my window to eat is generally from 1 to 7, 2 to 8, that 6-hour window.

Joe Shalaby: Still staying super lean. You still stay at fighting weight?

Randy Couture: Yeah, still doing a lot of circuit training. Don't do a lot of sparring and grappling anymore. The neck just won't take it. The discs in the neck are worn out. C4, C5 down to T1 are tired of my crap.

Joe Shalaby: What your body endured is just unreal. At the age you dominated the sport just defies like what the human body can take.

Randy Couture: I think the science of athletics has come a long way and you're seeing that across the board. You know, obviously in MMA I, I pushed that to 47, but you're seeing that in a lot of other sports, athletes fighting into their 40s where I think 30 kind of used to be that cutoff, so to speak. I think that cutoff has been pushed back now to 40 pretty, pretty significantly across the board. You're seeing hockey players, ball players in, in all sports playing longer. We've just gotten smarter, smarter about our our bodies, what to put in them, how to get the most out of them. And I'm certainly no exception to that. I, you know, trying to run a Ferrari. So you gotta put good things in it and take care of it or it's not gonna run very long.

Joe Shalaby: Welcome everyone to Coffees with Joe Shalaby. Today I am literally sitting here with a living legend, 6-time UFC world champion, movie star, entrepreneur, and God knows what else he does right now.

Joe Shalaby: Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine the lifestyle you lived to leave the sport as a champion at 47. You must have just lived in a camp.

Randy Couture: I mean, that was certainly my happy place. It's kind of the thing I miss about it now. It's not so much the fighting and walking out of that tunnel, but the camaraderie, the team, the team, the routine, because life is anything but a routine now. It's crazy. I'm traveling all over the place. But I do miss that routine. The one thing I miss, it was the impetus for all my buddies from high school, college, the Army would come to the fights. They'd come to Boston, they'd come to wherever I was fighting, Vegas, and I'd get to see those guys. That's the one thing I miss about fighting right now.

Joe Shalaby: How are you staying in touch now with all of them?

Randy Couture: You know, social media now, or, you know, these digital phones we're all carrying around. It's pretty easy to stay in touch with people now compared to when I was a kid. Thank God that we didn't have cell phones back then.

Joe Shalaby: Yeah. Do you think you would have maintained that level of discipline?

Randy Couture: Uh, yeah, I, I was pretty passionate about what I was doing. Wrestling became the thing for me at a pretty young age.

Joe Shalaby: I often wonder, will sports be impacted because of the distractions on cell phones? I look at like every major athlete like just scrolling in between, you know, being benched or, you know, before they get into a fight. Yeah.

Randy Couture: I don't know if it's gonna bleed its way into athletics. I mean, it's certainly a distraction. And I like to think of social media more of service media. If I'm focused on it for a service aspect of it, then I'm probably gonna be okay. If you're actually using it for the social aspect of it, you're, you're gonna find all kinds of issues in my opinion. But I think it's become a viable tool. But is it gonna start affecting athletic performance? I don't know. I think we're certainly seeing in, in intelligence dropping since we started implementing screens into teaching our kids, which is interesting. They're tracking that and they've been tracking that for quite a while, and they've seen a significant drop in, in the intelligence of our youth by all this screen time that they're getting now. We know the blue light's not great for you, the, the EMF, the, the radiation is not that great for you either. So there's some, there's some issues there for sure.

Joe Shalaby: And we do what we can to mitigate, but the studies are best.

Randy Couture: Yeah.

Joe Shalaby: All right, Randy, a lot of people like to talk about the champion Randy. I wanna do something a little different. I wanna talk about the Randy that most people don't know, which is what was life like in the Army?

Randy Couture: Army was great for me. I was one of those kids where everything kind of had its place. You know, my room was always clean. My friends would come over for sleepovers and dump their crap on the floor. I'm like, yo bro, that don't go there. What are you doing? You know, that was the kind of kid I was.

Randy Couture: So the transition to the Army was pretty easy. Pretty smooth for me. You know, I just need to learn how to fold my underwear properly and how to brush my teeth by the numbers. Um, 6 years of my life, 19 to 25 years old, very formative time for me. And I think once you take that oath and wear that green, you look at the world in a particular way. Um, obviously I think it goes back further. You know, I started wrestling at 10 for all the wrong reasons, uh, to get the attention of a, of a dad that wasn't around much. My mom raised 3 of us by herself. Um, And wrestling, those coaches filled that void. I found the place where I flourished. Those were my friends, soccer and wrestling, my two favorite sports. So, you know, still friends with my junior high school coach, literally my very first coach in wrestling, Coach Case Beer. And you, I think again, look through a particular set of eyes putting yourself through that kind of pain, that kind of suffering, if you will, every single day at practice. Once you've been through wrestling practice, everything else you face is pretty easy.

Randy Couture: Pretty easy, to be honest. That's why special operations guys look for guys that have strong wrestling pedigrees, because we have a particular mindset. And fighting just became an extension of wrestling for me after the Army, after college, after chasing that Olympic dream for 20-plus years. This crazy sport of no holds barred came along, and there were some good wrestlers, Don Frye, Mark Coleman, a couple others, Kenny Monday, Kevin Jackson, both Olympic champs trying this crazy new sport of MMA, no holds barred, is what they called it back then. And I saw that I was college roommates with Don Frye and had competed against Coleman in freestyle. So I knew these guys pretty well from the wrestling world. And then I see them fighting, I'm like, oh my God, that's crazy. What a crazy sport. And I was lucky enough back then to get into it. But I think the Army in many, many ways fashioned me. I don't think as a one-time state champ from Lynnwood, Washington, I don't think I had the confidence in myself to compete at that international or national stage. And I think that 6 years in the Army and wrestling for the Army, wrestling in Germany, you know, Tegel, Langendiebach, making the national team by '86, '87, and being an alternate on that '88 Olympic team as a soldier gave me the confidence that I could compete at that level. And then I went from there to Oklahoma State. I got a scholarship offer after being an alternate on the '88 team. All the college coaches were like, "Where'd that kid come from?" 'Cause like I said, I didn't get any attention out of high school. And the phone started ringing and I had to make a decision.

Randy Couture: Was I gonna stay in the Army at that time? You know, after 6 years I had 2 kids, you know, which is what sent me to the Army in the first place. I had a kid on the way and then my daughter was born while we were stationed in Germany. So, you know, it was a big decision, kind of a scary decision, frankly, to get out of the service where my family was being supported and I was still chasing that Olympic dream. So that was first big decision I really had to make was, you know, getting married and becoming a dad. And then the second was, am I gonna get outta the Army and take a scholarship and go and try to get a degree and wrestle in college? Or am I gonna stay right here and keep supporting my family and keep chasing the Olympic dream? Thankfully, Coach Winter, you know, the Army coach, you know, He was a great guy. He's still a good friend and someone that helped me in my journey along the way. Another one of those coaches said, "Hey, man, you're crazy if you don't take that scholarship, and you're crazy if you don't go to Oklahoma State." He had been there, you know, with the Hall of Fame and stuff, which is right there on campus. So he pushed me in the right direction, and I made the choice to get out of the Army and chase that college career.

Joe Shalaby: So you were Special Forces in the Army?

Randy Couture: No, that's a common misconception. A lot of people think I was a Ranger, and I never went to Ranger school. They trained me as an air traffic controller. You know, I was right in '82, right after Reagan fired all those guys. And so they gave me an enlistment bonus and I qualified academically. So I joined as an air traffic controller and then they figured out I could wrestle. After about 2 years in, I made the All-Army Wrestling Team. And so I spent most of my enlistment I spent wrestling for the Army. 4 of my 6 years in uniform was spent wrestling for the Army.

Joe Shalaby: I didn't even know that was a thing.

Randy Couture: Yeah, well, it's a big thing now. They have a world-class athletes program now in the Army. And the wrestling program is very, very strong. Back then when I was in, in the '80s, early '80s, the Marine team was the team to beat. They had the best program, but that's changed hands. Actually, my last year on the Army team, 1988, we beat the Marine team for the first time in the time I was on the team. So that was exciting. It was cool to go out that way. And then I drove from Fort Campbell, Kentucky to Stillwater, Oklahoma, start my college career.

Joe Shalaby: You know, it's really cool that you were able to actually turn wrestling into some sort of a, kind of not an educational goal, but what we're seeing right now is wrestling is becoming, you know, a way to actually make a living because there wasn't a way to really make a living in wrestling up until, what we're seeing right now with the resurgence of wrestling as like a mainstream combat sport.

Randy Couture: Yeah, I think MMA has been a big part of that. I think if you look at what RAF, Real American Freestyle, is doing in their streaming on Fox, uh, is they're, they're mimicking The Ultimate Fighter in some ways. And, and that short— that, that show obviously revolutionized mixed martial arts. And RAF is the first group to kind of come together to kind of put a package together for wrestling and make wrestling palatable and marketable. And they're doing a great job. So Very interesting matchups, a bunch of absolute studs, you know, world champs across the board in RAF. And I think MMA is part of that puzzle. You're seeing some bigger names in MMA that have wrestling pedigrees in some of those cards as well. But why? Because they made names in pay-per-views fighting in no-holds-barred and mixed martial arts. So no surprise there. I think they're doing a great job and it's fun to watch. MMA has become the professional outlet for amateur wrestling in many, many ways. And if you look across the board in all the promotions, a lot of the guys in those titles are guys that have strong wrestling pedigrees.

Joe Shalaby: Or jiu-jitsu.

Randy Couture: Jiu-jitsu and wrestling are both grappling. They're kind of the inversion of each other in many ways. Jiu-jitsu is wrestling inverted in many ways. Guys are so good from fighting from their back and using their long levers and their legs and operating from what, as a wrestler, you would account as a position of disadvantage, you know, being on the bottom. But they're very functional and they survive there and do very well. So now you kind of have to know both to dominate. You do. I think you have to be a well-rounded fighter now. This third generation of mixed martial artists is very skilled in all areas of the fight game. And you can't survive long in this sport now if you have a glaring weakness. If you're not good at some form of striking, not only being offensive, but defensive, protecting yourself, some form of transition from those striking positions to that grappling and that clinch work, clinch fighting, and then putting guys on the ground and being able to operate on the ground, both in the top or the bottom position, is what MMA has grown into, this hybrid sport. And it's interesting, in those early days, it was all about proving that your martial art was the best martial art. And I think we quickly realized there was no one style and one martial art that encompassed everything you needed to be good at. So I came in on the cusp of that change in mindset. My wrestling was a great place to start, but I had a bunch of other stuff I had to learn to be successful and not to have those glaring weaknesses. Somebody points those out to you in a fight, it's not very much fun.

Joe Shalaby: I mean, when did you start to work on your stand-up game? Was it immediately?

Randy Couture: Um, it's funny because that was the one sport my mom forbid me to do as a kid. I wanted to box. I loved boxing. And she's like, "No, you can play football, but you're not boxing." You know? And she laughs about that now. "I should have just let you do it back then." But, uh, Yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's interesting. I, I love the sport of boxing, but, uh, wrestling was where it was at for me. Started there at 10.

Joe Shalaby: Now we saw UFC enter jiu-jitsu. Now they got UFC BJJ. Do you think UFC will start a wrestling subsidiary now that REFC is actually making some noise?

Randy Couture: That's an interesting idea. Uh, REFC, and from what I've seen, there have been some other people, Prowl and some other organizations that have tried to throw, you know, wrestling matches and and not had very much success, but it seems like REEF is doing very, very well. I think we're going into what, their 10th show?

Joe Shalaby: Now they got big headliners. They got Merab and— Yeah.

Randy Couture: Fox is doing a great job of streaming. They're putting a great package together. It's exciting. It's fun to watch. Getting guys like Kyle Schneider and so many amazing both wrestlers and mixed martial artists that are stepping up.

Joe Shalaby: Sonnen is moderating, as you said earlier.

Randy Couture: Yeah. Sonnen's doing a great job commentating. Chael's pretty sharp.

Joe Shalaby: He was your student.

Randy Couture: Yeah. Chael's somebody I've known since he was in high school. Tried to recruit him to come wrestle for me at Oregon State when I was coaching at Oregon State. He chose a different path, so I ended up having to coach against him. He went down to the Ducks and I was up with the Beavers in Corvallis. So I had to coach against him, but I've known him since he was in high school. He's a great guy.

Joe Shalaby: All right, let's talk about your debut at UFC at age 33. First off, I wanna talk about what is it that inspired you to start such a crazy sport at that age?

Randy Couture: Well, like I said, it's, it's an extension of wrestling. And I saw other guys like Don Frye, who I knew very well in college, and Mark Coleman, who wrestled at Ohio State before I got to Oklahoma State. But somebody I wrestled in freestyle and knew from, from the international wrestling circuit that were doing this crazy sport of, of MMA. And so I was drawn to it. And back then it was different. You, you filled out an application You know, there wasn't any amateur MMA to speak of. So it wasn't like you were gonna go test yourself and work your way up. I mean, literally my first show was a UFC, UFC 13. In '96, I saw Frye and Coleman both competing. And a friend of mine through the wrestling world's like, "Oh man, you see that? You should do that. I'll send in the application for you." I'm like, "All right, whatever." I didn't think twice about it.

Joe Shalaby: It was that easy to get a UFC fight back then?

Randy Couture: Well, they didn't want any more wrestlers 'cause Frye and Coleman, you know, were kind of dominating. Coleman was the first heavyweight champ in many ways. And, you know, ground and pound and a bunch of the things he brought from the wrestling world and the wrestler's intensity to the sport. Coleman and Frye were, you know, Dan Severn, those were guys that were exemplifying that. And got guys like mine and Dan Henderson, Matt Lindland, a bunch of us other wrestlers saw what they were doing and said, "Man, that looks like fun." So I was fortunate enough to get in, but it was different back then. You literally put in an application. It wasn't like there was someplace you could go fight your way into a promotion like, like now there's an actual amateur sport. Yeah, there's, you gotta go through, you know, yeah, work your way up in the levels and get up to the, the regional shows and then get noticed there, win some titles there in a regional level, and you'll get noticed by a, you know, Bellator, PFL, LFA is one of those regional shows, a Midwest show that's pretty solid.

Joe Shalaby: I had the CEO on the show. He's, he's like the G League of the UFC.

Randy Couture: He likes to call it— he's like, I don't want to compete with them. Well, you know, that's smart. That's a smart promoter. He's not poking the bear. Yeah, he doesn't want to poke—

Joe Shalaby: yeah, no, he just wants to breed them.

Randy Couture: In fact, he's, you know, I think he's on their, their streaming.

Joe Shalaby: He is a brilliant guy. He's a very good guy.

Randy Couture: Good job. So we need outlets like that. The more outlets we have as fighters, the better. And that's the same at the highest level. You know, the UFC can't be the the only show in town. We need these other promotions to flourish and do well so we as fighters have lots of choices so you can get a fair shake and get, you know, get your piece of the pie while you're still physically capable of fighting.

Joe Shalaby: Well, they do try to lock you down with contracts now.

Randy Couture: The contracts are horrible. They really are. But, uh, that's a whole nother story. I was fortunate to get in at 33, almost 34 years old, and, and that age, that number, you know that used to mean something to a lot of people, especially in combative sports. By combative sports thought processes, I was already over the hill. So I was almost an underdog in every fight I got in from that very first show because of my age, which, you know, I think the science of athletics has come a long, long ways. And a lot of us across the board in all sports are getting a lot more out of our bodies than we used to. What used to be 30, you know, early 30s is that cutoff, I think is now more in the early 40s stage. And I fought till I was 47. I started when I was 40. 43, or 33, almost 34.

Joe Shalaby: So you fought from 33 to 43 consecutively. Yeah.

Randy Couture: And then you took a break. I was going through a divorce and kind of just didn't feel like myself. A lot of stuff going on personally. Stepped away from the sport for a little while. Started commentating at that time. That was '05, '06, around then. Got into a grappling competition here, the Professional Submission League, with Rico Ciparelli, my old manager. It was a really fun event. And I had been out of competition for over 10 months. Months when that event came along. And they matched me up with Jacaré D'Souza. And everybody thought I was gonna get smoked. I mean, he's a world champ and a great jiu-jitsu practitioner. And it was a very competitive match, and it ended up in a draw. And I knew in that moment that the competitive spirit was still there, and I still had more to do. So, it was a couple months later, I came out of retirement and fought Big Tim Sylvia. I think that was UFC 68. I'm not sure.

Joe Shalaby: Well, we're at like 320 now.

Randy Couture: All the numbers run together.

Joe Shalaby: Uh, but, uh, yeah, you won that fight. Yeah, that was, that was a heavyweight, right?

Randy Couture: That was at heavyweight. Uh, it was my first fight at heavyweight.

Joe Shalaby: And, uh, you were the light heavyweight champ prior?

Randy Couture: I've been the heavyweight champ, uh, you know, beating Maurice, uh, for the heavyweight title. But back then there were only two weight classes. Anything over 200 was a heavyweight, you know. Obviously now there's 8 or 10, you know, 8 weight classes. So, you know, we have light heavyweights and all this other stuff that grew.

Joe Shalaby: Phantomweight, you got.

Randy Couture: After, yeah, after the sport ran towards regulation and coming up with the weight classes and all those things that we're already used to from boxing that kind of in some ways gave us some credibility. You know, everybody thought we were crazy getting in a cage and fighting, that somehow we were all criminals. And most of us are college-educated guys. This was our outlet to be a professional athlete. Which is a big deal.

Joe Shalaby: Yeah, it's crazy the negative stigma that of the era of fighting that you grew up in. And even us, as, you know, as, uh, the people who just enjoyed the sport and watched it, they, they looked at us as, uh, you know, crazy people.

Randy Couture: Maybe you were criminals too. Yeah, there was two stigmas. One, the ground fighting. Nobody understood the ground fighting. I mean, even John Wayne picked that guy back up before he punched him again. Right, in the cowboy movies. So there was something about fighting on the ground and punching a guy on the ground and all this stuff that kind of went against fight etiquette in some ways. And then the cage, I think, was a stigma to overcome too. You're like, "You guys lock yourselves in a cage and fight each other? That's crazy. What are you thinking?" I mean, that's certainly what my mom said to me when I told her I was gonna fight in this thing called the UFC.

Joe Shalaby: The negative PR went all the way to, like, Capitol Hill. I mean, it was just like politics involved in everything.

Randy Couture: Senator McCain, yeah, started speaking out against the sport. Why? Because he's connected to Ann Houser Bush in boxing, and we're starting to break into those pay-per-view number ranges that are threatening what boxing is doing at that time. So that's where the political backlash comes from. They didn't really give a shit about us as athletes. Come on, they were being threatened by the pay-per-view numbers that MMA was putting up at that time. And so they started trying to politically undermine the sport. And we did the right thing by running towards regulation. You know, make this more understandable, create more rules. There were really only 4 rules in those early shows. I mean, you could wear gloves or not wear gloves, wear shoes or not wear shoes, wear a gi or not wear a gi. I mean, you got boxers out there with one boxing glove on, for crying out loud. I mean, you know, sumo wrestlers in there getting their teeth kicked out. It was pretty crazy back in the day. You know, you couldn't eye gouge. You couldn't bite, you couldn't groin strike, and you couldn't fishhook, which is, you know, putting your fingers in cuts or in a guy's mouth to control them. Those were the only 4 rules in the early days of the sport. So we started running towards regulation. Every show, there seemed like there was a new rule or something that we weren't allowed to do anymore. And we just slowly started figuring out what is now an amazing hybrid sport.

Joe Shalaby: Yeah. And now it really tests like the greatest athletes on the planet?

Randy Couture: It, uh, I mean, in many ways, Bruce Lee was the first mixed martial artist, right? He was kind of the first guy to want to buck the system, not operate in a single operating system— Wing Chun, you know, kung fu— was, you know, and they were kind of pissed that he steps outside that box and trained in all these other disciplines and started pilfering and picking what worked for him as an athlete from all these other styles. That kind of went against the, the tradition that martial arts had established. And so in many ways, he the first mixed martial artist. And the Gracies came along to promote Brazilian jiu-jitsu. They had these house fights that had been going on for a long, long time. You know, if anybody from any other martial arts style or school came to their school and beat their best student, you were gonna take home a $50K check. And to my knowledge, I don't think they ever gave that check away. And so Rorion wanted to find a way to market this style, Brazilian jiu-jitsu. He teamed up with Art Davie and Bob Meyerowitz, and they came up with this format called the Ultimate Fighter. World Fighting Championship. You know, '93, I think, was that first fight in Denver. Yeah. And, uh, you know, Royce, they picked, they handpicked Royce because of his size, because he was a smaller athlete, and they knew he was going to be out there against some of these giants and, and use jiu-jitsu to find a way to win. Brilliant marketing. Revolutionized martial arts in many, many ways.

Joe Shalaby: Before we continue on, do you want, do you want some more coffee? I have the barista bring some more coffee for you.

Randy Couture: I would love some more coffee.

Joe Shalaby: All right, perfect.

Randy Couture: Thank you.

Joe Shalaby: Randy, you managed to dominate two weight classes and you were the first, I believe, to do it, right?

Randy Couture: First to win in two divisions, yeah.

Joe Shalaby: Yes. What is it that ran through your crazy head to fight in two different weight classes?

Randy Couture: You're starting to sound like my mother.

Joe Shalaby: Man, that sport and then just to dominate in two different weight classes.

Randy Couture: Well, I was starting in the heavyweight division 'cause I wasn't cutting to 200 pounds. I was bigger than that. I was walking around and wrestling at 213, walking around at about 220. So it was a small heavyweight by heavyweight standards. The, the cutoff is 265 for heavyweights. Wasn't that when we started the sport. There was no cutoff. You could be as big as you wanted to be.

Joe Shalaby: So what was the biggest thing?

Randy Couture: We ran towards regulation, they created a cap. Yeah, at 265. Uh, so guys started cutting. Brock cut, you know, 20, 25 pounds to make 265 to fight. I know Tim Sylvia cut, cut weight. And these heavyweights started getting very, very big. And not just big guys. The early days, there were some big guys too. I mean, Tony Olimpia, in my first fight, was a 300-pound Finn. But he was a boxer, and I took him down. He didn't have any ground skills, and it was over in 45 seconds. So, they were big guys, but there were ways to operate around the big guys, the big bodies. Make them move, make them work. Those were things that tend— they tended to be deficient in, is mobility. And finding guys big enough to push you hard enough to really get you in shape is a challenge for those big guys. So, as they start out, started, you know, as the sport started to hybridize and become more specialized, these heavyweights are not just big guys anymore. They can actually move, got great submission skills, good wrestling skills, good striking skills. They, they became more formidable and more dangerous. You know, my first loss in the sport was Josh Barnett in the heavyweight division. Here's a 260-pound guy with some decent wrestling pedigree, heavy hands, and great submission skills. This guy, you know, it's not just a big dude, he can actually move. Rico Rodriguez, you know, second loss in the sport, uh, right after that. This is what brought me down to light heavyweight. I had 2 losses and 1 more fight of my contract. You know, you lose a couple times, especially nowadays, you're going to get cut, you're going to get let go. That's, that's the way it is. So they asked me to fight Andrei Arlovski, uh, for that third fight on my contract. And then 3 weeks before the show, Andrei broke his hand, and they couldn't find a replacement. So they said, hey, you know, Tito and Chuck are having this rhubarb. You know, Tito's the champ, Chuck's the number one contender. For whatever reason, Tito won't fight Chuck and give him his shot at the title. We're going to strip Tito. We're wondering if you want to come down to light heavyweight and fight Chuck for the interim championship while we're in the process of taking the belt away from Tito. I'm sure they were thinking, this guy just lost twice in the heavyweight division, we're going to finally get rid of his old ass, and we'll put against Andre and And Andre will whoop him, 'cause Andre was tearing everybody up back then. And then we'll be done with him. And then Andre gets hurt. They asked me if I fight Chuck, and I'm like, "Yeah, I'll come down and fight Chuck. No problem." And I was pretty sure they were reasonably certain that Chuck was gonna beat me.

Randy Couture: And it didn't go that way. I made friends with the potential that Chuck could knock me out. And I'm like, "Well, he might. He's good at it." it, but I'm going to hit him first. And stepped in the pocket and hit him before he got a chance to hit me. And that kind of kept him off balance for the entire fight, uh, in the first go-round. So now they're stuck with me as the interim champ and not Chuck, which is who they wanted. That's going to force Tito to either fight Chuck or be stripped of the title. So that's the only time they've ever asked me to say anything in the cage. They're like, look, if you win this fight, we want you to call out Tito because we want to unify these titles and we want Tito to fight you if you win this. So I stepped up after the fight and said, "Yeah, if you want this belt, you're gonna have to come in here and take it." It's one of the only times I've ever done anything like that. So— Yeah, good PR. You know, it worked. And then I ended up fighting Tito a couple months later to unify the two titles.

Joe Shalaby: And you won that one.

Randy Couture: I won that one, yeah. And you know, it was gonna boil down to wrestling. Tito had this very strong wrestling pedigree. He used his wrestling very diligently, offensively, to put guys on their back and make them fight off their back. And he was really good at floating over 'em and making their life miserable. Miserable. So I knew it was going to be— it was going to come down to who got that takedown. And, and if I let him take me down or conceded the takedown, I was going to end up on the bottom and eating his elbows, and that wasn't going to be much fun. So I knew I had to outwrestle him.

Joe Shalaby: That was a just a monumental part of history in, in the fight world.

Randy Couture: Yeah, both of those fights were all— yeah, yeah, Tim, I, you know, I think coming Coming out after 13 months off and fighting Tim was one of the few times my mom was like, "What are you doing? This guy's huge, 6'8"." She actually came to that fight. She was at that one. And that crowd was ridiculous that night in Ohio. Yeah.

Joe Shalaby: What did your mom say, like, when you just decided to—

Randy Couture: She refused to come for a while, and then we finally talked her to come into one of the shows live, 'cause it's a different animal live. And then, you know, she's not waiting for me to call her after the show, "Oh, I'm okay, Mom." Mom, just a couple stitches, no big deal. She was there. She knew I was fine. But the first one she came to was the Rico Rodriguez fight in Connecticut. And that's one of the worst injuries I sustained. I caught an elbow in the 5th round and fractured my orbit. I couldn't fly home for a couple of days after that. I had to wait till things settled down and I could fly and I could stand up without puking. Uh, it was a pretty serious injury. Injury. Took me about 6 months to recover from that one. It's probably the worst injury I sustained in your career. Yeah, as a fighter. Wow.

Joe Shalaby: Now let's talk about, you know, defying the gravity of age, because I think you hold the record as the oldest UFC champion in history.

Randy Couture: I might. I, I won it at 44 against I defended it against Gabe Gonzaga. I fought till I was 47. But the last, I think, 2 years of my fight career, I wasn't holding the title anymore. You know, everybody talks about, "Oh, 6 world championships." Like, "Yeah, dude, that means I lost it at least 5 times." And the truth is, I lost it all 6. Championship spirit's not about winning all the time. It's about how you deal with the adversity of losing, of those setbacks. That's where real championship spirit lives, in my opinion.

Joe Shalaby: 'Cause a lot of champions, they live around that title, and then they lose that title, they're just destroyed.

Randy Couture: Yeah. We saw that with Ronda. I'm excited for that fight coming up. Yeah. Her and Gina, obviously, we were part of Gina's process for a while when she was still fighting back in the day. And so I'm happy to see her getting the recognition she deserves as being one of the first female fighters to step up in the sport, to headline an event, you know, all that stuff. Stuff happened under Scott Coker and Strikeforce. And then, you know, years later, Ronda comes around and Dana gets behind her and puts her in the UFC. So I think it's cool that those two are matching up and finally going to get to settle that little debate. It's a classic matchup, the grappler and Ronda, you know, the judo bronze medalist and submission artist versus a very formidable striker in Gina Carano. Her Muay Thai, you don't want to be kicked by her. Her. She kicks like a mule.

Joe Shalaby: I wonder why UFC didn't take that, do that fight.

Randy Couture: Uh, it's a great question. You know, I think Ronda's been not with the company for a while. After the Nunes loss, she went into WWE for quite a while, um, and so I, I don't think she's under contract with anymore with, with the company.

Randy Couture: Consequently, what are we seeing? We're seeing a lot of rhetoric come out of her about fighter pay and some of these things that that I think, you know, 6, 7, 8 years ago she would've never chirped about because she was still attached to and being paid by the company. Where we're getting a little different view of Ronda and what she thinks about the UFC and how the UFC does business now going into this fight.

Joe Shalaby: I feel like you align with her in that mindset.

Randy Couture: I think there's a lot of fighters that do. And if they don't, they should.

Joe Shalaby: Yeah, absolutely.

Randy Couture: 'Cause they really need to look at what's going on in the sport. I mean, you know, they're trying to keep us in under 20% of the take from any single event. Event. Show me another professional sport in our society where that's the case. There isn't one. It's— they're all at least a 50% split. And boxing is 65 to 75% depending on who's fighting on those cards. So the promoters in the sport of mixed martial arts are, are taking advantage of the fighters in, in a significant way when it comes to fighter pay. There's no transparency in our sport. Nobody has to disclose how much money they're making off of any single event. So how am I supposed to, as a fighter, negotiate for my fair value in the marketplace if nobody knows how much how much these promoters are making off any given event. There's that transparency thing. And then the flaw in our sport, in boxing, the sanctioning bodies are separate entities that are independent of promoters that have stables of fighters that they want to promote and see get ranked and see get a shot at those titles. That's two separate entities. In MMA, it's the same guy. He's setting all those rankings, determining those titles, and he has a stable of fighters that are all bidding to be one of those guys. It's way too much power. And there's the flaw right there in the sport of mixed martial arts right now.

Joe Shalaby: And if they don't like—

Randy Couture: why boxers get paid millions and millions of dollars, and even the top-tier MMA fighters are making, uh, nowhere near that amount.

Joe Shalaby: I actually talked to a boxing promoter, and he said, you know, for— I mean, there's only a few boxing fighters that really get that representation, but from my understanding, from what he told me, in the boxing world, it's, uh, It's ran like the mob too. And I see a lot of correlation between MMA and, you know, boxing, but it's only a few fighters that really make those big bucks, similar to MMA.

Randy Couture: Well, and the Ali Act was a big piece of that. It was a federal legislation that was founded in 1996 and attributed to Muhammad Ali. Because here's one of the best fighters in the history of the sport that, you know, had to fight with promoters to take care of his money. We all know the Tyson stories and Don King and all the money that went away somehow. Some had disappeared through these promotions and these promoters. And so the Ali Act was designed to create transparency in the sport of boxing and hold these promoters accountable for how they were treating these fighters. And, you know, who was the commissioner in '96 when that act passed? Lorenzo Fertitta. The same guy that in 2001 bought the sport of mixed martial arts and the brand of the UFC. So he knew exactly what he was looking at, in my opinion. Opinion and how to exploit through these contracts and get their fair share of the money that they made. Now, you have to give them credit. They had the savvy to revamp the sport, give it a new facelift, make it more acceptable in the mainstream public. And The Ultimate Fighter was certainly a big piece of that. The reality genre was a great way to go behind the scenes and see what makes these guys tick. Who wants to get in a cage and punch another dude in the face? The Ultimate Fighter was a great— a great vehicle to expose that, the character that all these fighters have. And that first season of Guys was a very unique set of guys. We didn't know if this show was gonna be successful or what was gonna happen. They didn't care. They wanted to be there and get their shot, get their opportunity to succeed in the sport. And obviously, the show was a huge success.

Joe Shalaby: Dominated the charts.

Randy Couture: Yeah.

Joe Shalaby: All right, you're 47, 6-time world champion, champion, and you decide now, okay, I'm gonna hang my hat, I'm gonna walk away from the UFC. Yeah. After you walked away, what came next?

Randy Couture: That was a big decision. You know, we talked about some of those other decisions. Was I gonna leave the Army and, and pursue getting a college degree? And was I gonna get married and have a kid, you know, and step up there? Those were big decisions in my life. That was another one. Walking away from the sport I just spent 14 years of my life and a huge piece of who I am investing in. In that. Um, that was a— the James Toney fight, you know, was a fight that I took very seriously. And I think I was honored that I got the nod. I think they knew I wasn't going to try and stand around and box with James Toney. I was going to make him fight me in an MMA engagement and take him down and see how much MMA he'd learn in the 4 months. But, uh, that— every old injury I'd ever had nagged me in that, in that camp for some reason. Achilles tendonitis, all these different things that had happened to me over the years of wrestling and fighting, all flared up in that camp. And it was the first time that little internal dialogue, that crazy roommate, I was like, oh man, maybe that's your body telling you it's time to retire. I'm like, well, I'm not retiring on this fight. If I'm going to retire, I'm going to go out in a real, you know, a real MMA fight, you know, fight somebody that I respect. And, and not that I didn't respect James Toney, but that was more of an enigma fight, you know, boxing versus MMA and all that stuff wrapped up in that fight. Um, I ended up deciding that Lyoto Machida would be my fight at 46 going on 47, and, and turned 47 before that fight happened. Um, I didn't tell many people because I knew it would take on a life of its own, but it was an amazing experience. Toronto, you know, 55,000, the biggest, biggest, uh, venue and crowd we'd had in the sport of mixed martial arts in North America at that time. Um, and Lyoto was kind of the Rubik's Cube of MMA. He had such a unique style, black belt in jiu-jitsu but came from a Kyokushin karate background, so his footwork work was completely different. The way he set everything up was just— was completely different. So, um, that was interesting. Uh, took me a while to come to terms with that. Like I said, it becomes a huge piece of who you are, you know? And we see this with our military veterans as well. They walk away from that uniform. The military doesn't prepare them very well to assimilate back to civilian life and civilian lifestyle. And so these guys flounder. They, they self-medicate. They're adrenaline-seeking. Athletes struggle with a lot of the same things in transition, but they got a little more bravado. "Oh, I was in the NFL." You know, there's this facade that everything is great. And it's, you know, part of our training, certainly in the military and as athletes, is not to show weakness, not to show vulnerability, not to ask for help. And we as males in our society suffer from this same lie that we're somehow weak if we show emotion or any kind of vulnerability. So the whole thing is predicated on that. That's the downfall for a lot of guys, self-medicating, adrenaline-seeking. Now they've walked away. Who am I? What's my purpose now?

Randy Couture: Oh, that was certainly a big thing for me. Thankfully, both my transitions, when I walked away from the uniform, I was going to college to get that degree and wrestle for Oklahoma State. When I walked away from the sport of MMA, I'd already built this acting career. It had already started. And I had, you know, the gym and the clothing line and these other things that grew out of my time, my brand. Yeah. My time as a fighter. So I had those things focus on. I didn't flounder. I didn't wonder who I was. I was gonna be that gym owner, that, that business owner, uh, continued to chase acting jobs. Uh, it was something I became passionate about. So, um, I didn't have to wonder who I was and what I was doing. I started the foundation in '07, uh, a way for me to give back to a community that means a lot to me, that 6 years I spent in the uniform. So I started the GI Foundation to raise awareness for these guys since 9/11 and the War on Terror. They're getting messed up, and Uncle Sam can't take care of all of them or won't take care of all of them, who knows which. But it was a chance for me to raise awareness about many of these guys that have been wounded and help them out, put some funds in their pocket, take that stress out of their lives. So those things gave me purpose and allowed me something to focus on, something competitive. Acting's competitive. You're reading and trying out for parts against a lot a lot of other guys for these roles. And that's— there's a competitive side of that. And, and that certainly, you know, just look through those fighters' eyes, those wrestlers' eyes, and I'm going to solve those problems.

Joe Shalaby: So your first big move, you know, as an entrepreneur, as an actor, right after the gym, right after fighting, was it Extreme Couture? Was it, uh, was it the clothing line?

Randy Couture: No, those things thankfully were already in place.

Joe Shalaby: They were already in place.

Randy Couture: I didn't have to wait. I had already built those while I was still That was a good move. So, uh, you know, like I said, I didn't flounder. I didn't sit around like, man, what am I going to do today? I already had a bunch of stuff built in and built up and running that, that required my attention. Um, so, and that was—

Joe Shalaby: a lot of fighters make that mistake now that we, we don't forward think.

Randy Couture: I mean, that's something that I think makes us good as fighters is we're very egocentric. You have to be a little bit selfish to be a good fighter because you're going to make sacrifices in time and energy with friends, family, and loved ones because you're laser-focused on solving that problem, developing the skills, and being in shape enough to go out and solve the problem. Every guy you face is a problem.

Joe Shalaby: Now we see your gym has extreme success, Extreme Couture here. And we got, you know—

Randy Couture: I see what you did there, Joe.

Joe Shalaby: We got the resurgence of your clothing line with your collab with Affliction. Obviously a, a huge, uh, winner. And then let's talk about the movie business. I mean, you're a movie star.

Randy Couture: Yeah, that's something I didn't see coming. But like fighting, you know, I was in two fights all through school. I wasn't one of those kids. I spent my time on a wrestling mat, so I never had to get fights. In fact, the two fights I had, wrestling shined through. And, and, and once that happens, nobody's gonna mess with you. So I was never into trouble and never— I spent, you know, I was an athlete. I jock. Yeah, basically. Um, so yeah, you know, it's, uh, it's been an amazing journey, frankly, and, and did it all backwards, but somehow it managed to turn out.

Joe Shalaby: What's your favorite movie that you ever starred in? Wow.

Randy Couture: Well, I, I've gotten to play in all four of The Expendables.

Joe Shalaby: Yeah.

Randy Couture: And I grew up in that action era in the '80s, '80s, where, you know, Willis, Schwarzenegger, and Stallone were all competing for box office ticket sales in all these crazy action flicks. Rambo was in my home state of Washington, in Hope, Washington, you know. And I was one of those kids that ran around with a stick playing army anyway. So I loved Rambo. The Rocky movies— I don't know how many raw eggs I drank as a kid, but it was a lot, uh, you know, because of Rocky and, and, and everything that he did. So And then fast forward, and now I'm getting a call from my agent saying, "Hey, Sly Stallone wants you to come by his office. He wants to talk about this project he's making." And I'm like, "Really? All right." And it was, you know, that's one of those meetings you're not passing up. And so, you know, of course show up 10 minutes early 'cause that's the Army in me. If I'm not 10 minutes early, I'm already late. So, you know, Sly brings me in his office "to talk about Expendables 1, this project that he's putting together, this ensemble cast. And he wants me to play Hale Caesar," which I haven't even read a script yet, so I don't even know. I'm like, "Hale Caesar? That's a weird name." Kind of pitches me, "Originally wrote this for Wesley. Wesley's got some issues. We can't use Wesley, so we want to use you for this character. We'll rewrite it a little bit. You know, we want you to be this college-educated guy that rants about his cauliflower ears and quotes Nietzsche." And I'm like, "Oh, that sounds amazing." That's who you are now. And— Casting director was a little bit late, so she comes rushing in 'cause she's late for this meeting with Stallone. Of course, she bumps his bookshelf coming in the door, and he's got action figures on all of the shelves on this bookshelf, and Brigitte Nielsen falls off the top shelf and hits the deck. And Stallone's like, "Geez, where were you a few years ago?" Like, you know, obviously that was his ex-wife. So like, "Where were you a few years ago? I could have used you." And we just busted up laughing. That's just how witty and clever and quick he is. Um, that's, that's one of my favorite projects and, and movies to be a part of for sure. And if you want to be successful in an industry like that, then go hang out with a guy like that that has been at the top of his game for over 30, 30-plus years.

Joe Shalaby: Still at the top.

Randy Couture: Treats it like a profession. Didn't care about being famous. This is just where he wants to work and what he wants to do. He's an amazing writer, obviously. Rocky, Rambo, the first Expendables, he wrote, wrote all of those. Uh, he does a great job directing. I learned a lot from him just sitting around in video village watching and the way he operates and approaches the profession. So, uh, that was a big one for me. And I feel like every time I put myself out there, I learn a little more, I get a little better. You know, I spent my whole life as an athlete boxing up my emotions and putting them to the side and staying laser-focused on solving the problem, on, you know, figuring out how to beat that guy that's standing across the mat or across the cage from me. Now they want me to walk in front of one of these things and let all that out. I'm like, "Damn, I don't know if I know how to do that." to do that. Um, it's been a very interesting process. I think I've done 75 or 76 feature films now and been involved in a few reality shows and a few scripted TV shows as well. It's been a really, really interesting journey since the early 2000s. Cradle to the Grave was my very first feature film.

Joe Shalaby: Yeah, I remember that one.

Randy Couture: Yeah, Jet Li and DMX. I had a fight scene with DMX— with Jet Li in the movie. Um, one line, let's go kicking shit. That was it.

Joe Shalaby: Randy, any exciting projects you got coming up that we should be looking out for?

Randy Couture: I've got a film out on Amazon right now called F+. It's a kids movie, it's a comedy, and it was a lot of fun. Filmed that a few years back. And I've got one coming out, uh, the end of May that's hitting all the AMC theaters. It's a horror flick, uh, slasher flick, and I'm the psycho that's running around, uh, hacking people up. So it's a fun one. I really like the script because it shows flashbacks of why this guy's batshit crazy where most of the horror flicks, you know, I have no idea why Freddy was the way he was. Well, we kind of have an idea why the hunter was the way he was.

Joe Shalaby: What made them psycho? Kind of like a—

Randy Couture: his dad was psycho and he just kind of, you know, childhood trauma.

Joe Shalaby: What's the movie called?

Randy Couture: It's called Pitfall. Uh, everybody's like, is that like the video game? I said, no, it has nothing to do with the video game. But if you watched Rambo, you know, he made these booby traps and did all this kind of things that were indigenous. Well, that's a way of— a form of hunting as well as digging a pit with, you know, punji sticks or spikes in the bottom of it. That's what a pitfall is, and, uh, it's certainly a tactic that the hunter uses in the movie. Beautiful, huh? No stress, just calm. Fun fact: over the last decade, over 2,000 people have gone missing. What's the matter? Just get into the woods. Help me! Help me! It's a pitfall. It's a hunter's trap. Shouldn't be here. You're not allowed to hunt in this area. Where's Scott? Should have been back by now. We're going to find him. We're being hunted. Uh, watch your head. He's watching us. Help me! Run! Fire! Hell of a weekend, huh? Wait, wait, wait!

Joe Shalaby: Make sure you guys all watch Randy's new movie in theaters end of May, Pitfall. Given the length of the average fighters now, what would you recommend a young fighter think about in the early stages of fighting, and what should they be investing in early on in their career?

Randy Couture: Man, these are valuable lessons there that I learned the hard way. That first year fighting, I made more money than I'd ever made in my life, and Uncle Sam handed me my butt. So the first thing I try to instill in a lot of the guys I work with is incorporating, you know, get an LLC, get it, form a corporation, make this a business. You have a small window of opportunity to make this kind of money. You know, 6 or 7 years is the average lifespan. That's not a lot of time to make that kind of money. So you better find a way to take care of it. Going out and buying depreciating assets like fancy cars and crap like that is not gonna help you at the end of the day when you can't walk those 4 steps up in that cage anymore. You better hope you have taken care of that money and put it in places where it's gonna continue to work for you down the road. I liked real estate. I had some rental properties. I had a bunch of that stuff, but there's a lot of work involved in that. You know, finding these management companies that they're gonna take a percentage to do a lot of that legwork for you can be an important piece of that puzzle for real estate for sure. But it's tough to go wrong with real estate. It's always going to appreciate. You know, driving a fancy new car, second you drove that off the lot, it just cut its value in half. So that's not a very smart move, frankly. But getting a fighter to see those things is a real challenge, 'cause part of what makes us good at what we do is this kind of egocentricity. "Oh, it'll never happen to me." We have this kind of egocentric attitude that allows us to stay laser-focused on exactly what we've trained to do. And getting them to look at the big picture and recognize they have a very small window and opportunity to be successful, to make this kind of money as a professional athlete, is sometimes a hard message to get across. Message to get across.

Joe Shalaby: You know, your transition from fighting to entrepreneurship to, you know, business mogul was seamless. Now movie star, business mogul, and you're right, you know, leveraging your brand and your public persona just paved the way perfectly for that.

Randy Couture: Yeah. I think the thing is to be yourself. Yeah. I, I didn't know shit from Shinola when it came to business and I got my butt handed to me a couple times, but you find the right people and when you find the right people, you hang onto them. You had to develop new filters. Everybody you meet doesn't always have your best agenda and best intentions. Those were valuable lessons I had to learn early on as an athlete, as a professional and public person. And, you know, unfortunately lawyers and contracts and all this other stuff became part of life. And, you know, it was kind of way more of that handshake guy, but look you in the eye and tell you I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it. And a lot of the business world doesn't operate that way, unfortunately. So you have to cover your butt, you have to incorporate, you have to kind of do some of these things that are outside of the comfort zone, but they're important pieces, not only to protect your cash from Uncle Sam and paying an exorbitant amount of taxes, and certainly when we know where those taxes are going now, that's crazy. But recognizing that you have a short window of opportunity to make that kind of money as a professional athlete, and you better figure out where to put it so that it can work for you down the road when you can no longer compete and do the thing you're passionate about.

Joe Shalaby: Now, that brings me to my next question. I mean, I'm— and I'm hoping young fighters get to get the opportunity to watch this episode, but if there's, you know, a couple major takeaways, some major life advice that you would give a young fighter now, what would it be?

Randy Couture: Keep it simple. The world's complicated enough. And, and if you talk to guys like Tito and some of these other guys that have created these personas that they now have to live up to all the time, and People think that's who they really are, and that's not who they really are. I mean, we saw the real Tito when he was on The Ultimate Fighter and the passion and compassion he had for those athletes that were on his team. Not this brash guy that's talking smack all the time. But he created that persona to market himself.

Joe Shalaby: Punishment clothing and his brand.

Randy Couture: And all of that. So everybody assumes that he is that edgy kind of—

Joe Shalaby: Well, you also saw the political side of him.

Randy Couture: No. Yeah, I mean, using— There are two-pronged things there. First of all, certainly guys like Dana White, who was his early manager and Chuck's early manager, he likes that kind of rhetoric. He thinks it generates heat and interest and is going to help him sell pay-per-views. There's also a psychological aspect to the sport. If you start talking smack and trying to get under a guy's skin and irritate him and anger him, then he's not thinking about the right things he needs to be thinking about to go out and solve the problems that you pose. If you let Tito get under your skin and talk smack to the point where you're just pissed and want to smash him in the face, then he's winning because he's psychologically beating you and you're not staying calm, focused, and calculated on the ways to actually technically beat him. That's the psychological part of the game. And then there's the business— obviously the business side of the game where that, yeah, that kind of heat sometimes brings people in that want to, you know, it's a car wreck. People want to see those. They slow down on the freeway so they can see what's going on, the lookie-loos. So it's that mentality.

Joe Shalaby: All right, we're ending the show today with a new segment that we've launched. You're one of the first guests on season 3, and it's called Fight to Win or Cut Your Losses and Tap Out. So it's going to be really quick. So here's the rules, Randy. I'm going to give you a word, a situation, or scenario, and all you have to do is instantly answer fight or tap out.

Randy Couture: Yeah, let's do it.

Joe Shalaby: All right, trash talk opponent, fight to win Fight to win or tap out?

Randy Couture: Oh, fight to win.

Joe Shalaby: House with a bad foundation, fight to win or tap out?

Randy Couture: Oh, I think you gotta tap out on that one.

Joe Shalaby: The next question applies to right now. Training at 5 AM?

Randy Couture: Oh, absolutely fight to win.

Joe Shalaby: An overpriced mansion?

Randy Couture: Tap out.

Joe Shalaby: I love that about you, Randy. I love it. Opponent 20 years younger than you?

Randy Couture: Oh, fight to win.

Joe Shalaby: Let's go!

Randy Couture: Oh, put the old man on them.

Joe Shalaby: Old man strength is a real thing.

Randy Couture: Yep.

Joe Shalaby: Interest rates drop suddenly.

Randy Couture: Interspace what?

Joe Shalaby: Interest rates. Oh, interest rates drop suddenly. Fight to win or tap out?

Randy Couture: Oh, fight to win.

Joe Shalaby: Let's go. Broken nose in round 1?

Randy Couture: Fight to win.

Joe Shalaby: Randy Couture, the man, the myth, the legend. Thank you so much for being on the show today. You've been an absolute pleasure. You know, I'm giddy about you being here. It's like a dream come true for me. I'm sure for many people watching show. They're excited to hear the real Randy Couture story. Thank you for being on the show, Randy.

Randy Couture: Thanks, Joe. Appreciate you for having me on.