In short
Randy “The Natural” Couture discusses his UFC career and training habits, how the Army shaped his mindset, the evolution of MMA and wrestling, fighter pay/contract transparency, and his post-retirement transition into acting, business, and veteran-focused work.
Guest backgrounds
Randy Couture is a 6-time UFC world champion and Army veteran. He served 19–25 (6 years total) and trained/wrestled for the Army, including making the all-Army wrestling team and being an alternate on the 1988 Olympic team. He later became an entrepreneur (gym and clothing line), and an actor (notably the Expendables films).
Key claims
Athletic science has extended careers into the 40s; MMA became a hybrid sport requiring striking, grappling, and transitions; UFC fighter pay lacks transparency and is too promoter-controlled; he was not a Ranger (trained as an air traffic controller); he holds/claims the record as the oldest UFC champion (won at 44).
Notable examples
UFC 13 debut via application; interim title vs Chuck Liddell to force a Tito fight; unification win vs Tito Ortiz; worst injury: fractured orbit vs Rico Rodriguez; last fight vs Lyoto Machida; acting highlights including Expendables and a Stallone meeting; GI Foundation started in 2007.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOMorning Routines of a Champion
0:46 to 1:40
Randy discusses his morning routine and fitness philosophy.
“Six-time UFC world champion, movie star, entrepreneur, And God knows what else he does right now.”
The Evolution of Athletic Longevity
1:40 to 3:24
Randy shares insights on how the science of athletics has changed over the years.
“Been doing the intermittent fasting since I retired from fighting in 2011.”
Reflections on Army Life
3:24 to 5:25
Randy talks about his experience in the Army and its influence on his life.
“The one thing I miss, it was the impetus for all my buddies from high school, college, the Army, would come to the fights.”
Transitioning from Army to Wrestling
5:25 to 8:10
Randy discusses his journey from the Army to college wrestling and beyond.
“which is what was life like in the Army?”
Wrestling's Impact on MMA
8:10 to 10:46
Randy explains the relationship between wrestling and mixed martial arts.
“And I went from there to Oklahoma State.”
The Future of Wrestling in MMA
10:46 to 14:00
Randy discusses the potential evolution of wrestling within the MMA landscape.
“And then I drove from Fort Campbell, Kentucky to Stillwater, Oklahoma, to start my college career.”
Randy Couture's Journey into MMA
14:00 to 24:40
Explore Randy's transition from wrestling to MMA and his debut at UFC.
“I should have just let you do it back then.”
Challenges and Triumphs in Two Weight Classes
24:40 to 28:00
Randy discusses his unique experience competing in two weight classes in the UFC.
“I have the breeze to bring some more coffee for you.”
Couture's Fight Against Chuck Liddell
28:00 to 29:10
Learn about Randy Couture's unexpected victory over Chuck Liddell and its implications.
“And I'm like, yeah, I'll come down and play Chuck.”
Facing Tito Ortiz and Career Challenges
29:42 to 31:38
Couture discusses his fight with Tito Ortiz and the challenges he faced in his career.
“Protect yourself now at aura.com slash remove.”
Show all 23 chapters
Aging in the Octagon
31:38 to 33:59
Explore Couture's thoughts on aging as an athlete and his record as the oldest UFC champion.
“and I could fly and I could stand up without puking.”
Fighter Pay and Industry Transparency
33:59 to 37:49
Couture shares insights on fighter pay disparities and the need for transparency in MMA.
“Show me another professional sport in our society where that's the case.”
Transitioning After Fighting
37:49 to 42:00
Couture reflects on his transition from fighting to entrepreneurship and acting.
“And obviously the show was a huge success.”
Raising Awareness and Finding Purpose
42:00 to 43:20
Randy discusses his motivation to raise awareness and help wounded veterans.
“And Uncle Sam can't take care of all of them or won't take care of all of them, who knows which.”
Transitioning from Fighting to Entrepreneurship
43:20 to 45:00
Randy shares his smooth transition from fighting to business ventures and acting.
“Now we see your gym has extreme success, extreme couture here.”
The Journey into Acting
45:00 to 46:40
Randy recounts his unexpected journey into the film industry and his experiences with Sly Stallone.
“I don't know how many raw eggs I drank as a kid, but it was a lot, you know, because of Rocky and, and, and everything that he did.”
Upcoming Film Projects
46:40 to 48:20
Randy reveals details about his upcoming films, including a horror movie called 'Pitfall'.
“That's one of my favorite projects and movies to be a part of, for sure.”
Advice for Young Fighters
48:20 to 50:00
Randy provides valuable financial advice for young fighters to secure their futures.
“And he just kind of, you know, childhood trauma.”
The Importance of Financial Planning
50:00 to 51:40
Randy emphasizes the necessity of financial management for fighters and entrepreneurs.
“Make sure you guys all watch Randy's new movie in theaters end of May, Pitfall.”
Lessons Learned in Business
51:40 to 53:20
Randy shares lessons learned about navigating the business world and protecting assets.
“Six or seven years is the average lifespan.”
Psychological Aspects of Fighting
53:20 to 55:00
Randy discusses the psychological tactics in fighting and the importance of being calm.
“Yeah, I didn't know shit from Shinola when it came to business, and I got my butt handed to me a couple times.”
Psychological Strategies in Fighting
56:01 to 57:29
Explore the mental tactics and business aspects of competitive fighting.
“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.”
Fight to Win or Tap Out Game
57:30 to 57:59
Randy Couture participates in a rapid-fire game of choices related to competition.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00One, two, three.
0:13Hey. Nice to meet you. How are you? You as well. Good. Welcome to Coffee with Joe Shalaby. What can I get for you? A latte would be great. Latte? Whole milk, oat milk? Whole milk is great. Amazing. How many shots? Just one. Perfect. All right. Nicky is back. Would you like a piece of candy? Actually, that'd be fantastic. You've got some dark chocolate there. Right over here. 72 %? Ah, perfect. Amazing. Let me take you over. Awesome. Thank you.
0:42Welcome, everyone, to Coffees with Joe Shelby. Today, I am literally sitting here with a living legend. Six-time UFC world champion, movie star, entrepreneur, And God knows what else he does right now. The one, the only, Randy, the natural couture. Randy, thank you so much for being on the show today. Thanks, Joe. I appreciate you having me on, bud. We just launched season three and it's been an absolute blessing so far. And, you know, sitting here with you just really makes me like a giggly kid, right? The production crew is making fun of me just for being so giggly and just, you know, being around such greatness.
1:26And it's very rare where I'll sit with someone who's just dominated a sport. You're like the Michael Jordan of UFC. So we'll get into it. I ask everybody this same question when they're on the show. What's your morning routine? Morning routine, 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 one to seven, two to eight, that six hour window. Still staying super lean. You still stay at fighting weight. Still doing a lot of circuit training.
2:02Don't do a lot of sparring or grappling anymore. The neck just won't take it. The discs and the neck are worn out. C4, C5 down to T1 are tired of my crap. What your body endured is just unreal. And at the age you dominated the sport, it just defies what the human body can take. I think the science of athletics has come a long way, and you're seeing that across the board. Obviously, in MMA, 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 significantly across the board.
2:40You're seeing hockey players, ballplayers in all sports playing longer. We've just gotten smarter, smarter about our bodies, what to put in them, how to get the most out of them. and I'm certainly no exception to that. I'm trying to run a Ferrari, so you've got to put good things in it and take care of it or it's not going to run very long. 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. 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 routine, because life is anything but a routine now.
3:22It'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 get to see those guys. That's the one thing I miss about fighting right now. How are you staying in touch now with all of you? 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.
3:54Yeah. Do you think you would have maintained that level of discipline? Yeah. I was pretty passionate about what it was doing. Wrestling became the thing for me at a pretty young age. 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 you get into a fight. I don't know if it's going to 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 going to be okay.
4:34If you're actually using it for the social aspect of it, you're going to find all kinds of issues in my opinion. But I think it's become a viable tool. But is it going to start affecting athletic performance? I don't know. I think we're certainly seeing 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 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 EMF, the radiation is not that great for you either.
5:11So there's some issues there for sure. And we do what we can to mitigate, but the studies are best. Yeah. All right, Randy, a lot of people like to talk about the champion, Randy. I want to do something a little different. I want to talk about the Randy that most people don't know, which is what was life like in the Army? Army was great for me. I was one of those kids where everything kind of had its place. 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.
5:43So, uh, the transition to the army was 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, six 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 to get the attention of a dad that wasn't around much. My mom raised three of us by herself. And wrestling, those coaches filled that void. I found the place where I flourished.
6:18Those 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 K. Spear. and you I think again look through a particular set of eyes putting yourself through that 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 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.
7:05And there were some good wrestlers, you know, Don Frye, Mark Coleman, you know, a couple others, Kenny Monday, Kevin Jackson, you know, 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 teammates with Don Frye, And I competed against Coleman in freestyle. So I knew these guys pretty well from the wrestling world. And 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 Linwood, Washington, I don't think I had the confidence in myself to compete at that international or national stage.
7:51And I think that six years in the Army and wrestling for the Army, wrestling in Germany, you know, Tege Leng and Diebach, 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 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? Because 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. Was I going to stay in the Army at that time?
8:28After six years, I had two kids, 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 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 the first big decision I really had to make was getting married and becoming a dad. And then the second was, am I going to get out of the Army and take a scholarship and go and try to get a degree and wrestle in college? Or am I going to stay right here and keep supporting my family and keep chasing the Olympic dream?
9:11Thankfully, Coach Winter, the Army coach, he was a great guy. is 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 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. So you were special forces in the Army? No, that's a common misconception. A lot of people think I was a ranger and I never went to ranger school.
9:47I mean, you seem like a ranger. 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 two years in, I made the all army wrestling team. So you were wrestling there. Most of my enlistment, I spent wrestling for the Army. Four of my six years in uniform was spent wrestling for the Army. I didn't even know that was a thing. Yeah. 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.
10:29Back 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, to start my college career. You know, it's really cool that you were able to actually churn wrestling into some sort of 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.
11:18Yeah, 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, is they're mimicking the ultimate fighter in some ways. And 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. Some 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.
11:58Why? Because they made names in pay-per-views fighting in No Holds Barred in 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 and all the promotions, a lot of the guys in those titles are guys that have strong wrestling pedigrees. Or jiu-jitsu. Jits 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, being on the bottom.
12:42But they're very functional and they survive there and do very well. Now you're going to 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 the 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 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.
13:22and 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 wasn't a 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 I mean when did you start to work on your stand-up game was it immediately. It's funny because that was the one sport my mom forbid me to do as a kid.
13:55I wanted to box. I loved boxing. And she's like, no, you can play football, but you're not boxing. And she laughs about that now. I should have just let you do it back then. But yeah, it's interesting. I love the sport of boxing, but wrestling was where it was at for me. started there at 10. Now we saw UFC enter Jiu Jitsu now they got UFC BJJ do you think UFC will start a wrestling subsidiary now that REF is actually making some noise? I don't know. That's an interesting idea REF 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 not had very much success but it seems like REF is doing very very well I think we're going into what their 10th show Now they got big headliners.
14:45They got Murab and Frankie Edgar. Box is doing a great job of streaming. They're putting a great package together. It's exciting. It's fun to watch. Guys like Kyle Snyder and so many amazing both wrestlers and mixed martial artists. And Sonnen's moderating as you said earlier. That's very cool, yeah. Sonnen's doing a great job commentating. Chael's pretty sharp. He was a student. 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.
15:18He 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. All right, let's talk about your debut at UFC at age 33. First off, I want to talk about what is it that inspired you to start such a crazy sport at that age? Well, like I said, it's an extension of wrestling. And I saw other guys like Don Fry, 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 the international wrestling circuit that we're doing this crazy sport of MMA.
15:59And so I was drawn to it. And back then it was different. and you filled out an application, there wasn't any amateur MMA to speak of. So it wasn't like you were going to go test yourself and work your way up. I mean, literally my first show was at UFC, UFC 13. In 96, I saw Fry and Coleman both competing. And a friend of mine through the wrestling world was 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. It was that easy to get a UFC fight back then? Well, they didn't want any more wrestlers because Fry and Coleman were kind of dominating.
16:37Coleman was the first heavyweight champ in many ways and ground and pound and a bunch of the things he brought from the wrestling world and the wrestlers' intensity to the sport. Coleman and Fry, Dan Severn, those were guys that were exemplifying that. And got guys like mine, Dan Henderson, Matt Lindl and 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 some place you could go fight your way into a promotion like now there's an actual amateur sport work your way up in the levels and get up to the regional shows and then get noticed there win some titles there in a regional level and you'll get noticed by Bellator, PFL LFA LFA is one of those regional shows, a Midwest show that's pretty solid.
17:34The CEO on the show, he's like the G League of the UFC. He likes to call him. 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 the bear. No, he just wants to breed up. In fact, I think he's on their streaming platform. He is, yeah. He's a brilliant guy. He's a good guy. 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 only show in town. We need these other promotions to flourish and do well so that we as fighters have lots of choices.
18:06So you can get a fair shake and get, you know, get your piece of the pie while you're still physically capable of fighting. Well, they do try to lock you down with contracts now. The contracts are horrible. They really are. But that's a whole nother story. I was fortunate to get in at 33, almost 34 years old. And that age, that number, you know, that used to mean something to a lot of people, especially in combative sports. By combative sports 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.
18:44And 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 43 or 33, almost 34. So you fought from 33 to 43 consecutively. Yeah. 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 um got into a grappling competition here the professional submission league with rico chiperelli my old manager it was a really fun event and i had been out of competition for over 10 months when that event came along and they matched me up with jacquard de souza and everybody thought i was going to 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 all we're at like 320 now all the numbers run together uh but uh yeah you won that fight yeah that was that was a heavyweight right that was at heavyweight uh It was my first fight at heavyweight.
20:10You were the light heavyweight champ prior. I've been the heavyweight champ of, you know, beating Maurice 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 eight, eight or ten, you know, eight weight classes. So, you know, we have light heavyweights and all this other stuff that grew. Bantamweight, you got. 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.
20:44You know, everybody thought we were crazy getting in a cage and fighting. 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. 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 the people who just enjoyed the sport and watched it they they looked at us as uh you know crazy people you were criminals too yeah and then 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.
21:31And then the cage, I think, was a stigma to overcome, too. You're like, you guys lock each selves 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 going to fight in this thing called the UFC. The negative PR went all the way to, like, Capitol Hill. I mean, it was just like... Politics involved in everything. Senator McCain started speaking out against the sport. Why? Because he's connected to Anaheuser-Busch 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.
22:06So 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 four 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 and you couldn't bite you couldn't groin strike and you couldn't fish hook which is you know putting your fingers in cuts or in a guy's mouth to control them.
22:55Those were the only four roles 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. Yeah. And now it really tests like the greatest athletes on the planet. It, uh, I mean, in many ways, Bruce Lee was the first mixed martial artist, right? He was kind kind of the first guy to want to buck the system, not operate in a single operating system. Winchung, you know, Kung Fu. 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.
23:39That kind of went against the tradition that martial arts had established. And so in many ways, he was 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 going to take home a 50K check. And to my knowledge, I don't think they ever gave that check away. And so Horian wanted to find a way to market this style, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He teamed up with Art Davey and Bob Meyerowitz, and they came up with this format called the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
24:18But, you know, 93, I think, was that first fight in Denver. Yeah. And, you know, Hoist, they picked, they handpicked Hoist 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 used jujitsu to find a way to win. It's brilliant marketing. It revolutionized martial arts in many, many ways. Before we continue on, do you want some more coffee? I have the breeze to bring some more coffee for you. I would love some more coffee. All right, perfect. Thank you.
24:53Randy, you managed to dominate two weight classes, and you were the first, I believe, to do it, right? First to win in two divisions, yeah. Yes. What is it that ran through your crazy head to fight in two different weight classes? You're starting to sound like my mother. Man, that's smart, and then just to dominate in two different weight classes. I was starting in the heavyweight division because I wasn't cutting 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 cutoff is 265 for heavyweights.
25:28Wasn't that when we started the sport? There was no cutoff. You could be as big as you wanted to be. So what was the biggest guy you put up? As we ran towards regulation, they created a cap at 265. So guys started cutting. Brock cut 20, 25 pounds to make 265 to fight. Tim Sylvia cut weight. These heavyweights started getting very, very big. And not just big guys. The early days, there were some big guys, too. I mean, Tony Halema, in my first fight, was a 300-pound fin. 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.
26:06Make them move. Make them work. Those were things that 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 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. They've got great submission skills, good wrestling skills, good striking skills. They became more formidable and more dangerous. You know, my first loss in the sport was Josh Barnett in the heavyweight division. And there's a 260-pound guy with some decent wrestling pedigree, heavy hands, and great submission skills.
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26:49This guy, you know, is not just a big dude. He can actually move. Rico Rodriguez, you know, my second loss in the sport right after that. This is what brought me down to light heavyweight. I had two losses and one more fight on 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 the way it is. So they asked me to fight Andre Orlovsky for that third fight on my contract. And then three weeks before the show, Andre broke his hand and they couldn't find a replacement. So they said, hey, you know, Tito and Chuck are having this rhubarb.
27:28You know, Tito's the champ. Chuck's the number one contender. For whatever reason, Tito won't fight Chuck and give him a shot at the title. We're going to strip Tito. 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 Andre will whoop him because Andre was tearing everybody up back then. And then we'll be done with him. And then Andre gets hurt.
28:00They asked me if I fight Chuck. And I'm like, yeah, I'll come down and play Chuck. No problem. And I was pretty sure they were reasonably certain that Chuck was going to beat me. 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, 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 around. 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.
28:38So 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. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where Aura comes in. Aura actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off.
29:11They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But Aura goes beyond data protection. With one app, you get a VPN, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, dark web monitoring and even up to$5 million in identity theft insurance, all backed by 24-7 U.S.-based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or just a VPN. Aura gives you all of it, together, at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today at aura.com slash remove. Protect yourself now at aura.com slash remove. Because we want to unify these titles and we want Tito to fight you if you win this.
29:49So I stepped up after the fight and said, yeah, if you want this belt, you're going to have to come in here and take it. It's one of the only times I've ever done anything like that. Yeah, good PR. You know, it worked. And then I ended up fighting Tito a couple months later to unify the two titles. And you won that one. I won that one, yeah. And, you know, it was going to boil down to wrestling. Tito, that is very strong wrestling pedigree, 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 them and making their life miserable.
30:23So I knew it was going to come down to who got that takedown. And if I let him take me down or conceded to 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. That was just a monumental part of history in the fight world. Yeah. Both of those fights were all. Yeah. Yeah, Tim, I think 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, six foot eight. She actually came to that fight. She was at that one. And that crowd was ridiculous that night in Ohio.
31:06Yeah, what did your mom say when you just decided to? She refused to come for a while. and then we finally talked her to come into one of the shows live because it's a different animal live. And then, you know, she's not waiting for me to call her after the show. And, oh, I'm okay, 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 fifth round and fractured my orbit. Couldn't fly home for a couple of days after that. Had to wait until things settled down.
31:40and I could fly and I could stand up without puking. That was a pretty serious injury. It took me about six months to recover from that one. It's probably the worst injury I sustained as a fighter. Yeah, as a fighter. Wow. Now, let's talk about defying the gravity of age. Because I think you hold the record as the oldest UFC champion in history. I might. I won it at 44 against Tim I defended it against Gabe Gonzaga I fought till it was 47 but the last two years of my fight career I wasn't holding the title anymore you know, everybody talks about oh, six world championships like yeah dude, that means I lost it at least five times and the truth is I lost it all six 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 because a lot of champions they live around that title and then they lose that title they're just destroyed 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 happened under Scott Coker in Strikeforce.
33:11And 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 movie ties. You don't want to be kicked by her. She kicks like a mule. I wonder why UFC didn't do that fight. It's a great question. I think Ronda's been not with the company for a while. After the Nunes loss, she went into WWE for quite a while.
33:53And so I don't think she's under contract anymore with the company. 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 I think, you know six seven eight years ago she would have never never chirped about because she was still attached to and being paid by the company um or 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 i feel like you align with her in that that mindset a lot of fighters that do and if they don't they should yeah we need to look at what's going on uh in the sport i mean you know they're trying to keep us in under 20 % of the take from any single event.
34:32Show me another professional sport in our society where that's the case. There isn't one. It's 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 taking advantage of the fighters in a significant way when it comes to fighter pay. There's no transparency in our sport. And nobody has to disclose how much money they're making off 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 these promoters are making off any given event?
35:06There'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 this 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. And if they don't like it? You know why boxers get paid millions and millions of dollars, and even the top-tier MMA fighters are making nowhere near that amount.
35:48I actually talked to a boxing promoter and he said, you know, for, I mean, there's only few boxing fighters that really get that representation. But from my understanding, from what he told me in the boxing world, it's, 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. And the OLLI 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.
36:28We all know the Tyson stories and Don King and all the money that went away somewhere disappeared through these promotions and these promoters. And so the OLLI 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 and 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 a certainly a big piece of that the the reality genre was a great way to go behind the scenes and see what makes these guys tick.
37:26Who wants to get in a cage and punch another dude in the face? The Ultimate Fighter was 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 the show was going to be successful or what was going to 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. Dominated the charts. Yeah. All right. You're 47, six time world champion. And you decide now, okay, I'm going to hang my hat. I'm going to walk away from the UFC.
38:03After you walked away, what came next? That was a big decision. You know, we talked about some of those other decisions. Was it going to leave the army and pursue getting a college degree? And was it going to 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 that. That was a, the James Tony 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 Tony.
38:39I was going to make him fight me in an MMA engagement and take him down and see how much MMA he'd learned in the four months. But that every old injury I'd ever had nagged me 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. And 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 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.
39:23I ended up deciding that Lyoto Machida would be my last fight at 46 going on 47 and turned 47 before that fight happened. I didn't tell many people because I knew it would take on a life of its own, but it was an amazing experience. It's Toronto, you know, 55 ,000, the biggest venue and crowd we'd had in the sport of mixed martial arts in North America at that time. And Leona 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 was completely different. The way he set everything up was just, was completely different.
40:02So that was interesting. Took me a while to come to terms with that. Like I said, it becomes a huge piece of who you are. 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 self-medicate. They're adrenaline-seeking. Athletes struggle with a lot of the same things in transition. But they got a little more bravado. I was in the NFL. There's this facade that everything is great. and it's 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.
40:46And 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, and that is the downfall for a lot of guys. Self-medicating, adrenaline-seeking, now they've walked away, Who am I? What's my purpose now? 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 in WrestlePro Oklahoma State. When I walked away from the sport of MMA, I'd already built this acting career. It already started. And I had the gym and the clothing line and these other things that grew out of my time, my brand.
41:29Yeah. My time as a fighter. So I had those things to focus on. I didn't flounder. I didn't wonder who I was. I was going to be that gym owner, that business owner, continued to chase acting jobs. It was something I became passionate about. So I didn't have to wonder who I was and what I was doing. I started the foundation in 07, a way for me to get back to a community that means a lot to me that six 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.
42:10But 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 of other guys for these roles. There's a competitive side of that. And that certainly, you know, just look through those fighters' eyes, those wrestlers' eyes, and I'm going to solve those problems. So your first big move, you know, as an entrepreneur, as an actor, right after the gym, right after fighting, was it extreme couture?
42:49Was it the clothing line? No, those things, thankfully, were already in place. I didn't have to wait. I had already built those while I was still fighting. 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 a lot of fighters make that mistake now. We don't forward think. I mean, that's something that I 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.
43:36Every guy you face is a problem. Now we see your gym has extreme success, extreme couture here. And we got, you know, I see what you did there, Joe. We got the resurgence of your clothing line with your collab with Affliction, obviously, a huge winner. And then let's talk about the movie business. I mean, you're a movie star. 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 that I spent my time on a wrestling mat. So I never had to get fights. In fact, the two fights I had wrestling shine through and, and, and once that happens, nobody's going to mess with you.
44:13So I was never into trouble and never, I spent, you know, I was an athlete. I was a jock, basically. So, yeah.
44:28It's been an amazing journey, frankly. And did it all backwards, but somehow it managed to turn out. What's your favorite movie that you ever starred in? Wow. Well, I've gotten to play in all four of the Expendables. Yeah. And I grew up in that action era in the 80s where, you know, Willis, Schwarzenegger, and Stallone were all competing for box office ticket sales and all these crazy action flicks. Rambo was in my home state of Washington and 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, you know, because of Rocky and, and, and everything that he did.
45:12So then And 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 because that's the Army in me. I'm not 10 minutes early. You're early. I'm already late. So, you know, Sly brings me in his office to talk about Expendables One, this project that he's putting together, this ensemble cast. And he wants me to play Hail Caesar, which I haven't even read a script yet.
45:51So I'm like, Hail Caesar, that's a weird name. Kind of pitches me. I originally wrote this for Wesley. Wesley's got some issues. We can't use Wesley. So I 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 because she's late for this meeting with Stallone. Of course, she books, she bumps his bookshelf coming in the door and he's got action figures on all his, all the, all the shelves on this bookshelf.
46:24And Bridget Nielsen pulls off the top shelf and hits the deck. And Slough's like, geez, where were you a few years ago. Obviously that was his ex-wife. So, like, where were you a few years ago? I'm going to use you. And we just busted up laughing. That's just how witty and clever and quick he is. That's one of my favorite projects 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. Still at the top of his game. Creates it like a profession. Doesn't care about being famous.
47:00This is just where he wants to work and what he wants to do. He's an amazing writer. Obviously Rocky Rambo, the first 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 the way he operates and, and, and, 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've 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 and, you know, figuring out how to beat that guy that's standing across the mat or across the cage from me.
47:40Now 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. 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. Yeah, I remember that one. Yeah. Jet Li and DMX. I had a fight scene with Jet Li in the movie. One line, let's go chicken shit. That was it. Randy, any exciting projects you got coming up that we should be looking out for?
48:19I've got a film out on Amazon on right now called F plus 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 we kind of have an idea why the hunter was the way he was. What made them psycho? Kind of like a dog.
48:55His dad was a psycho. And he just kind of, you know, childhood trauma. What's the movie called? It's called Pitfall. 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, is digging a pit with punji sticks or spikes in the bottom of it. that's what a pitfall is. And 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.
49:37What's the matter? Skin into the woods. Help me! Help me! Fuck! He's got it!
49:48It's a pitfall. It's a hunter's trap.
49:57Shouldn't be here. You're not allowed to hunt in this area.
50:06Where's Scott? Should have been back by now. We're gonna find him. No!
50:17We're being hunted. Uh, watch your head.
50:26He's watching us.
50:31Help me!
50:41Run!
50:54Hell of a weekend, huh? Wait, wait, wait!
51:00Make 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? Man, these are valuable lessons there that I learned the hard way. That first year of 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. Get an LLC, get a former corporation, make this a business. you have a small window of opportunity to make this kind of money.
51:42Six or seven 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 going to help you at the end of the day when you can't walk those four steps up in that cage anymore. You better hope you have taken care of that money and put it in places where it's going to 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 going to 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.
52:21But 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 because 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.
53:04You know, your transition from fighting to entrepreneurship to 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. Yeah, I think the thing is to be yourself. Yeah, 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 on to 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.
53:45And, you know, unfortunately, lawyers and contracts and all this other stuff became part of life. And it was kind of way more of that handshake guy, by looking in the eye and telling you I'm going to do something, I'm going to 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.
54:38Now, that brings me to my next question. I mean, and I'm hoping young fighters get the opportunity to watch this episode. But if there's, you know, a couple of major takeaways, some major life advice that you would give a young fighter now, what would it be? Keep it simple. The world's complicated enough. 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 it'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 Punishment Clothing and all of that so everybody assumes that he is that edgy kind of well you also saw the political side of the whole yeah I mean using there are two wrong thing 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 that generates heat and interest 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.
55:58If 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 obviously the business side of the game where 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 looky-loos. So it's that same mentality.
56:33All right, we're ending the show today with a new segment that we've launched. You're one of the first guests on season three 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. Yeah, let's do it. All right. Trash talk opponent, fight to win or tap out? Oh, fight to win. House with a bad foundation, fight to win or tap out? Ooh, I think you got to tap out on that one. Next question applies to right now. Training at 5 a.m.?
57:12Oh, absolutely. Fight to win. An overpriced mansion. Tap out. I love that about you, Randy. I love it. Opponent 20 years younger than you. Oh, fight to win. Let's go. Put the old man on him. Old man strength is a real thing. Yep. Interest rates drop suddenly. Interest space what? Interest rates. Oh, interest rates. Drop suddenly. Fight to win or tap out? Oh, fight to win. Let's go. Broken nose in round one. Fight to win. 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 the show they're excited to hear the real Randy Couture story thank you for being on the show Randy thanks Joe appreciate you for having me on
58:14Thank you.
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From the publisher
Six time UFC world champion. Army veteran. Actor. Entrepreneur. Joe sits down with Randy "The Natural" Couture to hear the story behind the legend. The Army days, the Wild West era of UFC, dominating two weight classes, life after fighting, and the financial lessons most athletes learn too late.
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