MMAPredictions

At the LA Fitness Expo last weekend, there was the heavy mixed martial arts presence one might expect in Southern California. Several MMA fighters were on hand to endorse various products, like Kieth Jardine, Dean Lister, Marcelo Garcia, and others. In addition to Javi Vazquez‘ Gracie US Nationals Brazilian jiu-jitsu tournament and other attractions, Randy Couture was on hand for an question and answer session with the crowd.

In a two-part series, MMAPredictions.com presents a transcript of some of the interesting points Couture made when interacting with the audience. Unfortunately, audience members were not given the microphone when asking questions, so the exact questions are unknown. So we’ve put one line of summary before each of his answers for you.

On his longevity

One of the things that’s allowed me some longevity is the fact that I’ve kept my fitness base pretty high. It also makes it easier to peak when I enter that ten week peaking phase where I am training twice a day, six days a week to have that peak performace for a fight. The rest of the time I am still doing strength and conditioning, some cardio training, but it’s only two to three days a week. The other days, I still love to get on the mat. Those times between fights is when you get to develop new techniques… you go to a different school, you bring in a different guy that has a different perspective or different background… You can learn a new position, some new skills, so that then when you go back to the drawing board to get ready for a fight, you can implement the game plan. That’s the fun time, when you get to go out on the mat and do it because you love it. So, I think in keeping your conditioning constant in the long term makes those peaks higher.

On the best pound-for-pound fighter

It’s really hard to pick the best pound-for-pound fighter. I am impressed by a lot of guys. The lightweight division now is incredibly deep, there’s a lot of great fighters there. I have been very very impressed with George St. Pierre and a lot of the things that he’s done in some of his recent fights. I think he’s showed some wrestling skills, he’s got a very dynamic striking style, he connects all the dots very very well. For my money that’s the guy I really like to watch now but there’s so many good fighters out there that it’s hard to pick one to say “oh this is the best guy”. Fedor [Emelianenko] is one, but I don’t think he’s been challenged recently in the last year, year and a half by any of the top guys. But I still think he’s one of the best fighters out there as well.

On mental preparation for an MMA fight

The mental aspect of the game is someplace I’ve had the benefit of being a part of the Olympic wrestling program. I had a sports psychologist that taught me a lot of the mental skills that allow me to apply them to this combat sport. Things like thinking postively, visualization exercises, rest and relaxation exercises, learning to control that little voice in our head especially as the temperature and the pressure of the fight rise when the fight gets closer. The “I should’ve done more of this, I should’ve done more of that”. Learning that you control that voice and that voice doesn’t control you. Those are all what I call mental skills. Just like learning the skills for fighting, you’ve got to practice the mental skills so that you have some tools in your tool belt to deal with the adversity of competition, to go out and relax and smile, focus, and unleash what you’ve trained to do. Use the gifts that God gave you, whatever those may be. We’ve seen it time and time again where the guy in the training environment has all the tools and is hell on wheels, but he goes and walks up in that cage or ring and he can’t pull the trigger, he can’t get the job done. Where’s the disconnect? The disconnect is here in his brain, so developing some mental skills to deal with that adversity is a huge piece. That’s a piece that a lot of us neglect. We spend ninety percent of our time working on the physical tools and very little time working on the mental tools to implement the physical tools.

On Brock Lesnar making $250,000 in his second professional fight

The money isn’t that big of a deal if you look at the grand scheme of things… He probably made a lot more in pro wrestling than he has in MMA. Realistically, those guys generally make between one and 1.5 (million) per year. He got $250,000 to fight in MMA. He’s going to fight a lot more times to get up to what he’s used to in pro wrestling. I think it’s admirable that he left pro wrestling and came back to a real combative sport. Pro wrestling is great, it’s fun to watch but there’s nothing real about it. He had a great collegiate background. He’s a very skilled athlete, he’s a big guy, I think given the time, he’s going to be a very formidable heavyweight, but I think it was silly to throw him in there against a former world champion in his second fight. I think anyone who knew anything about MMA knew what was going to happen. I don’t think what happened was a function of submission or jiu-jitsu skills. It’s going to take him years to catch up with a guy like Frank Mir. I think his striking itself was okay, it was a lot of hammerfists. He flailed, he didn’t selectively pick punches that were going to damage Frank Mir and end that fight, which is a lack of experience. I think he can learn plenty of submissions that are going to keep him out of trouble, which is all he really needs to do is stay out of trouble. And be more selective with his punches, and use that size and that wrestling base to be effective. It would’ve been a different outcome. That comes with experience and that’s what he doesn’t have yet.

On the future of the sport

I think we’ve over come the stigma that was attached to the cage. I think that most people that watch the sport realize that the cage contains the sport much better than a ring and ring ropes. I think now that we’ve progressed and been accepted at a more mainstream level you’re going to see more promotions move away from the ring because of the ring stoppages and the ring just doesn’t contain the ring very well with the grappling and wrestling, and they’re going to go ahead and use cages. There’s been two issues: I think the negative public opinion of “Ooh, you’re a cage fighter?” is kind of gone now, and frankly cages were a lot more expensive. Rings already existed around, you could find them cheap! Nobody was really making cages. A cage costs between twenty to twenty-five thousand dollars. There weren’t a lot of promotions that were starting up that were able to spend that out of the gate and know if they were going to be successful or not. Now I think the price of those has come down, you can find them, and the stigma’s gone, so I think you’re going to find more and more people using the cage.

Stay tuned to MMAPredictions.com later this week for Part Two, which will include Couture’s breakdown of the fight between Anderson Silva and Dan Henderson at UFC 82: Pride of a Champion!

- Caleb

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