Randy Couture: ‘UFC Don’t Care About the Fighters’
UFC Hall of Famer Randy "The Natural" Couture became the first two-division champion in the promotion's history in September 2003. He's held the heavyweight title three times and the light heavyweight crown twice.
He lost to heavyweight championship to Brock Lesnar in November 2008 and retired from fighting in 2011.
Lesnar is expected to return to the Octagon next year to face two-division champion Daniel Cormier for the heavyweight title.
Lesnar last fought at UFC 220 in July 2016. He originally defeated Mark Hunt by unanimous decision, but the result was later overturned after it was revealed the Lesnar tested positive to the estrogen blocker clomiphene during an out-of-competition test administered 11 days before the fight. He also failed his in-competition test for the same banned substance the night of the fight against Hunt. He was fined $250,000 and received a one-year suspension.
Couture was asked about Lesnar's rumored return and the expected title bout against Cormier while appearing on Submission Radio and had some harsh criticisms of the match-up.
“Well, you know, they want to tout their USADA and all their strict rules for drug testing, but somehow this guy managed to get through and still managed to fail a test but still compete. Which begs the question: what’s going on?" said Couture.
Prior to his win over Hunt being ruled a No Contest, Lesnar had lost back-to-back fights and was out of the sport for five years. His last legitimate win inside the Octagon was in July 2010.
"Obviously, the rankings and all of that stuff, they manipulate that however they want anyway. Whatever makes business sense to them is all that really matters. They don’t care about the fighters; they don’t care about those rankings. You know, lots of guys have jumped queue. It’s certainly not based on merit. So, that’s nothing new," Couture said.
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Lesnar's a household name and has generated some of the biggest pay-per-view buy rates in UFC and WWE history. According to Couture, that's all that matters to the fight promotion.
"I’m not surprised. He’s a huge draw. I mean, at the end of the day, that’s the business of it. It’s about selling Pay-Per-Views. Certainly, DC is the champ and rightly so, they’re gonna put him in there with a guy like DC and that’s gonna draw huge Pay-Per-View numbers. So, that’s what it boils down to for them."
