Randy Couture Question and Answer Part 2 with Audio
This is the second of a two-part series where MMAPredictions.com has transcribed some of the questions Randy Couture received from the audience at last weekend’s LA Fit Expo. (Click here for Part 1). As before, we’ve summarized the gist of the question from the audience member for you because their questions were not asked into the microphone and were inaudible. Head to the bottom of this article if you are interested in how to listen to Couture’s comments instead of reading them.
On protecting oneself in training
The nice thing about getting older is that we get a little smarter. We eliminate a lot of the bullcrap that we did when we were younger that we got away with, especially those peaks and valleys where we lay off training for a month, two months, sometimes longer and then try and climb back into shape. I think the older athletes realize that if they go out of shape that it’s going to be much more difficult to get back into shape. You know I am not worried about concussions. I think the grappling nature of our sport eliminates a lot of the sustained pounding to the head. When we do just focus on pure striking as a part of our sport, most of us use headgear. We’re not doing round after round of kickboxing where taking a lot of punishment to the head. Outside of a couple of fights I don’t think I’ve had more than the two concussions in the twelve years that I have been fighting, and those came from competition. I don’t think it’s ever happened in training. I don’t think that’s an age issue, I just think it’s a function of our sport. The way we train and all the rules of engagement - when you start eliminating the rules of engagement to limiting it just to striking, I think you have to wear protection. You gotta wear shin guards, you gotta wear headgear. I hate headgear! But if we’re just kickboxing or boxing, I’m gonna be wearing headgear. Because guys have a tendency with the bigger gloves to let their hands go a little more, you risk getting hit harder, and more often when you’re just focusing on that piece of our sport. If we’re doing the MMA training, wearing the smaller gloves, first of all, all the guys I train with have very good control, so you’re pulling your punches, you’re not letting go, and now you’re looking at submissions and grappling, clinching, and all the other things that are indigenous to our sport that limit your ability to sustain pounding to the head, so I think it’s a big difference. I don’t think you’re going to see a bunch of punch drunk MMA guys in the future.
On the upcoming fight between Anderson Silva and Dan Henderson at UFC 82: Pride of a Champion
If Dan will stick to a gameplan, he has the skill set to be very hard on Anderson. He’s great from the clinch, he’s got a tremendous wrestling background and pedigree. He’s not the same kind of junkyard dog fighter that Matt Lindland is. There’s nothing pretty about it, but it’s very effective. That’s the kind of style that is like the opposite of Anderson. Everything Anderson does is very smooth, very pretty. I mean, he is fun to watch. And Lindland is like the kryptonite to that. He’s gonna take you down and smother you, drool on you, just pound the crap out of you. So, it’ll be interesting to see how Danny approaches this fight. If he kinda steps into his normal fashion where he’ll feel confident in his right hand, he’s got a real nice left hook to go with that right hand, and he gets into slinging leather with Anderson, it’s not going to be good for him. But if he goes out and uses his clinch, controls the position, gets inside, and eliminates Anderson’s plum clinch, doesn’t take a bunch of those knees and establishes that good wrestler’s base on top, Anderson’s going to have a bad night. That’s what I love about that fight. You have a lot of trouble picking who’s going to win that and those are the ones you like to see because you just don’t know and you can make a case one way or the other.
Nogueira is one of those dynamic black belt jiu-jitsu guys that finds a way to manipulate you into that chess match on the ground. His stand up is good enough and he’s got an awesome chin. He can survive to put you eventually where he wants you. So he’s definitely an interesting guy in that sense… The most impressive thing to me in the Tim Sylvia fight (at UFC 81) was the sweep, it wasn’t the submission, but the fact that he took a 6′8″ guy who weighs 280 pounds and he was able to sweep him from the bottom the way he did. That was very very impressive. Having felt Tim and Tim’s girth and everything else, that’s not easy to do, so Nogueira poses some interesting problems.
Which is better, wrestling or jiu-jitsu?
First of all, there are a lot of similarities. Jiu-jitsu on the ground is wrestling inverted. Laying on your back, you’re mechanically using a lot of the same positions from a different perspective, so there’s a lot of similarities. “Putting the hooks in”, we call “leg riding”… We have a lot of different names for the same positions and techniques. This is speaking from collegiate wrestling. Because the only real style that focuses on the ground and control is collegiate wrestling. We are the only country in the world that has that style. (In) freestyle, greco.. the ground does not apply. It’s all about turning a guy, picking him up and throwing him. Those don’t really apply to fighting. Collegiate style wrestling is all about control, holding a guy down and keeping his back on the mat. Those control positions do translate to fighting. I find way more of my collegiate wrestling background that applies to ground fighting positions, like that bottom leg Turk in half guard. There’s a lot of similarities to that and jiu-jitsu. The jiu-jitsu perspective is just better for being on your back. To a collegiate wrestler, that’s the last place he wants to be. It’s inverted in some respects. I don’t know that I’d say one is better than the other, I think it’s a matter of figuring out what works for you, your body style, your speed, strength, flexibility… Again it’s those gifts, those tools that God gave you.
We know that the more ways we provide to digest MMA information, the happier you are, so we also are providing the audio from this event in an episode of MMAPredictions Radio. Bear in mind that the sound quality is not great as it was coming from some massive PA loudspeakers about ten feet away from our recording device, but we’re offering it just in case you’d still like to hear Randy’s words in his own voice.
Click here to listen to the 16 minute mp3!
- Caleb 
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