MANCHESTER, England – The long and winding road of Randy Couture’s fight career leads Saturday night to do the door of the Manchester Evening News Arena, a building that proudly proclaims itself the single-most booked major arena in the world.
Couture, who headlines UFC 105 against Brandon Vera in a match that will air in America on a Spike TV same-day tape delay, is the biggest UFC star to fight in the U.K. since the company started running regularly here in 2007.
Of course, Couture brings with him the usual question marks. He’s 46 years old and he’s coming off two straight losses.
“I feel I’m the best fighter I’ve ever been,” said Couture (16-10), who arrived in England on Monday.
The five-time former UFC champion noted that he has certain benchmarks he sets for himself in training, most notably in his conditioning and explosiveness, that he still meets. He had long said he was taking it one fight at a time, but on Thursday was talking about taking it one year at a time.
Physically, Couture has avoided the type of injuries that have finished the careers of most men a decade younger. With the exception of surgery on a broken left forearm suffered blocking a kick in the 2007 fight against Gabriel Gonzaga, he has never had an operation in a sports career that took him all the way to a U.S. Olympic wrestling alternate before he ever stepped into the cage.
He’s dropping down from heavyweight to light heavyweight, the same move he made in 2003 that revitalized what appeared to be a career at its end. It will be the third time he’s had a major change in his career, as he retired in 2006 but came back the following year as a heavyweight to win the fifth of his record-setting UFC championships.
“When I fought Brock Lesnar and [Antonio Rodrigo] Nogueira [his two losses over the past year], my body could still do what I wanted it to, even though I didn’t get the ‘W.’ ”
But if Couture doesn’t get the win here, the Methuselah of the mats will be completely out of the championship picture for the first time in his UFC career.
Depending upon how many people can be squeezed into an arena that is sold out (with a few hundred tickets to be released Friday after the big screens are placed into the upper deck) the crowd will be in the range of 16,000-16,500. And even with popular British fighters like Michael Bisping and Dan Hardy in important matches, the belief is the crowd is here to see Couture most of all.
He visited Manchester for the first UFC event in the city in 2007, not to fight, and when the crowd saw him for the first time, it reacted with a huge standing ovation that UFC officials still talk about.
While UFC is not as popular in the U.K. as it is in the U.S., a sampling of opinion around the city seems to place it high on the major sports ladder. To the average sports fan, Manchester is synonymous with Manchester United, and clearly soccer is the dominant sport.
There are plenty of signs of American pop culture, but most interestingly, much of it is big cultural figures from the past, like Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne or Audrey Hepburn. There is no sign of the NFL, Major League Baseball, the NBA, NHL or any sport popular in the U.S. except for boxing, and even then, the focus is on British stars such as Ricky Hatton and David Haye.
But the UFC brand is everywhere in town. The malls are filled with UFC merchandise, and the bookstores have autobiographies of Couture, Chuck Liddell, Tito Ortiz and Matt Hughes displayed every bit as prominently as the top soccer stars like David Beckham.
Couture and Vera are no strangers, and Vera considers Couture his personal hero in the sport.
“The Natural’s” greatest hits
1. UFC 68: def. Tim Sylvia, unanimous decision: Couture came out of retirement and dominated a fighter six inches taller, 40 pounds heavier and 13 years younger to win the heavyweight title.
2. UFC 43: def. Chuck Liddell, round 2 TKO: In what was expected to be Liddell’s crowning moment, Couture stole the show and claimed the interim light heavyweight title.
3. UFC 44: def. Tito Ortiz, unanimous decision: Takes Ortiz’s title and his dignity as Couture literally spanks Ortiz after kicking his tail for five rounds.
4. UFC 15: def. Vitor Belfort, TKO: Derailed Belfort’s express train to stardom; Belfort is just now regaining his previous stature, 12 years later
5. UFC Japan: def. Maurice Smith, majority decision: Several choices for final slot, so we’ll go with his first UFC title victory.
List compiled by Dave Doyle.
And Vera isn’t the only one on this show that could be said about.
There was a joke going around that with Couture fighting in the country for the first time, he may be signing more autographs for the British fighters who grew up idolizing him than he would for the fans.
“He’s been a hero and he’s been a mentor,” Vera said.
Couture remembered meeting Vera at the U.S. Olympic training center when both were wrestlers. He also trained with Vera as a main sparring partner before one of his fights with Liddell. Vera noted that at times he’s trained at the Xtreme Couture Gym in Las Vegas.
Both men have noted that in particular, they’ve gone back to their wrestling roots as a key part of their training. Vera knows his wrestling has to be good idea to at least be competitive enough to not be put on his back.
Vera said he’s never trained harder or felt better. He hoped that avoiding any late weight-cutting, he was down to 203 after his Wednesday workout, will avoid any conditioning issues late in the fight. But he made it clear that his reverence of Couture ends when the cage door shuts.
“If you hold back for a second against Couture, you’ll get taken down and beaten up on the ground,” Vera said. “He’s given some of the best ass whippings on the ground and I don’t want to be on the receiving end of that. I’m not playing around.”
For Couture, wrestling is the key to victory. He sees Vera’s best weapon as his low kicks, that if used effectively, will enable him to keep his distance and keep Couture from getting inside. The question becomes how many low kicks can his 46-year-old legs absorb before they are compromised to where he won’t have the leg drive to complete his needed takedowns.
“The thing is, I’ll be looking and when he lifts that leg, that means he’s on one leg, and that he can’t move, and that’s when I need to get him to the ground,” Couture said.
Couture doesn’t see the drop to light heavyweight as any kind of an issue. He said he’ll go into the cage at 215 or 216 pounds. He was only 220 without needing to cut in his last two fights as a heavyweight, and noted as a heavyweight, he was concentrating on eating more to keep size. So it was just a little bit of tightening of the diet and he’s right there, with no compromising of strength to fight in the lower division.
But that doesn’t mean he’s ruled out a return to heavyweight.
“Lyoto Machida [the light heavyweight champion] is an interesting fight to me,” he said about the UFC’s current light heavyweight king. “But I can go back to being a heavyweight. It’s all based on where the opportunity is. If the opportunity is at heavyweight and UFC wants me to fight Brock Lesnar, then I can be a heavyweight next year.”
