Randy Couture

Randy Duane "The Natural" Couture was born in 1963 on June 22nd in Lynwood, Washington. When he was ten, Randy attended his first wrestling tournament and was immediately hooked.

At the age of eighteen the future UFC great graduated high school and was already one of the top Greco Roman wrestlers in the nation.

Randy Couture picked up some basic boxing skills during a six year stint in the Army. He befriended fellow wrestler and future MMA competitor Don Frye in college whom Couture followed into the UFC.

UFC XIII saw Randy debut against the three hundred plus pound Tony "The Viking" Halme whom he choked out in under a minute. 

He went on to defeat the highly regarded Vitor Belfort and other opponents in three more UFC bouts. While still undefeated in the UFC, he suffered two straight losses in VTJ 1998 and Rings-Rise 1st.

The losses seemed to fuel Randy Couture and on October 9th he defeated Jeremy Horn and Ryushi Yanagisawa at Rings-King Of Kings 2000. He followed that up by steam rolling back into the UFC and taking out the powerhouse Kevin Randelman.

Randy's first loss in the Octagon would come at the hands of Josh Barnett on March 22nd in 2002 at UFC 36, but Randy would guickly send the losses to the background by dominating the highly regarded Pedro Rizzo in back to back matches, stopping Rizzo in the second bout.

Back to back losses  to Josh Barnett and Rico Rodriguez, and his age, made Randy an underdog in  his bout with the hard hitting Iceman Chuck Liddell. Couture proved his critics wrong and did the impossible by outstriking Liddell and avoiding the ground game.

Liddell and Couture would go on to fight a trifecta, but first Randy would Take out Tito Ortiz and split two matches with Vitor Belfort.

Randy didn't have as much success during his next two bouts against the Iceman. He lost both an retired after the second. A stint as coach opposite Liddell on The Ultimate Fighter reality show created interst in the rematch between the two.

Randy has already come out of his retirement and is making a comeback against UFC heavyweight champ Tim Silvia at UFC 68.

Ray Mardo is a former freestyle wrestler. The Austin Film Festival honored writer now spends his days as the webmaster of several websites about ultimate fighting championship and mixed martial arts, extreme championship wrestling, world championship wrestling, who is the coolest guy on the planet, and DJ training.