Randy Couture Says Fedor “Epitome of a Competitor” in MMA, Talks PFL Challenger Series

By
Jay Anderson
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UFC Hall of Famer, two-weight class champ and heavyweight tournament winner Randy Couture has a busy weekend coming up.

Couture will be serving as a celebrity judge on the latest instalment of the PFL Challenger Series this weekend, for the women’s featherweight fights. That’s a role, for those curious, that he’ll serve in twice more this season, before returning to the broadcast booth for the league’s regular season.

Following this week’s Challenger Series card, Couture will also be on hand for Fedor Emelianenko’s retirement fight, having been announced as one of the special guests expected to greet “The Last Emperor” in the cage following his final fight at the Kia Forum in L.A.

We caught up with “The Natural” this week to get his thoughts on the Challenger Series, Fedor’s final fight, his role in the upcoming Expendables 4 and more.

“This is about determining and ferreting out new talent and giving them an opportunity to sign a contract with a big organization,” Couture told Cageside Press about the Challenger Series, “and potentially to get into the regular season, come through to the playoffs and make it to the final, the championship, which is a big shiny title belt and a million bucks.”

Case in point, Couture noted, Challenger Series alumni Carlos Leal, and Dilano Taylor, the latter of whom made it all the way to the final last season. “Both those guys’ fight records were pretty low, it wasn’t like they had a plethora of fights and experience. I think that’s an indication of just how much talent is out there.” Giving that talent a shot is what the PFL Challenger Series is about, Couture added. “I like it a lot.”

The PFL format is, in a way, a return to the sport’s roots, back to the tournament days where Couture got his start. But the sport itself has come a long way since then.

“My first fight was UFC 13, it was still a tournament format, there were very few rules on the books back then, I think four rules on the books. We did the weigh-in in the lobby of the hotel in Augusta, Georgia,” Couture recalled. “I didn’t know a single guy I was fighting. There was no video footage, I didn’t see those tapes, I didn’t even see those guys until I stepped on the scale.”

“Now, we’re on the ticker on every sports channel out there, they’re cordoning off half the arena just to do the weigh-ins. It’s changed tremendously since 1997 when I started, and the PFL is a huge step in the right direction I think for our sport,” he continued. “Getting back to the root of martial arts. It’s not about publicity stunts, trash talk or any of that stuff that seems to be rewarded in other places. It’s about going out in that cage and executing tactics and techniques that are going to score you points, and win fights, and give you a shot at the playoffs and ultimately a shot at that championship every year.”

With the PFL being a “true sports format,” the athletes involved are certainly asked to embrace the grind, Couture added, “but most of them to a man and woman like knowing when their next fight’s going to be and who their next fight’s going to be against, potentially.”

During this year’s PFL Challenger Series run, the league is introducing both a women’s featherweight and flyweight division. That has some, including the fighters themselves, wondering if more than one spot in the regular season could be up for grabs.

“I think there’s a possibility, especially if you start talking about the women’s divisions,” said Couture, who noted that lightweight had been created for Kayla Harrison. The PFL, the only organization who featured the weight class, is now doing away with it, with featherweight being introduced in its place this year. “So creating an opportunity for more women and getting more women into each of those divisions I think is exactly what we need to do. We need to give more opportunities to more women and create more places for them to fight, and the PFL is certainly doing that by adding a new weight class.”

Couture is interested in seeing how Kayla Harrison looks cutting down to 145lbs, something she has done just once before, and never in the PFL. While Harrison is expected to feature in the super-fight division, Couture also believes she’ll want revenge on Larissa Pacheco, who served up her first defeat as a professional in the 2022 women’s lightweight championship.

“I know Kayla, and Kayla wants that rematch with Pacheco for sure. Now, is she going to shy away from [Cris] Cyborg or [Amanda] Nunes or any of these other top females? I don’t think so. She’s as competitive as a person as I’ve ever met, and as diligent and forthright as any athlete I’ve been around too,” Couture stated. “She does a great job. I know her, she wants that match back. For sure. So we’ll see when and where that happens, but she savours the opportunity to fight any of those top gals, because her goal is to be considered the top female in our sport. Actually, the top athlete in our sport. Forget gender, she doesn’t care. She wants to be considered the best athlete in our sport, and I think she’s well on her way and in the conversation already.”

Fedor Emelianenko has long been considered one of the best in the game, arguably the GOAT, especially at heavyweight. He’s a talent Randy Couture himself never managed to share the cage with, though not for lack of effort.

“He’s the epitome of a competitor in our sport. No nonsense, rarely spoke, that walkout was so stoic and amazingly Russian, honestly, but I think it captured the imagination,” Couture said about Fedor, looking back to the time the pair were neck-and-neck as the top heavyweights in the world. “And the way he competed. As explosive as anybody, bullets from that right hand that you’d better be aware of, and his submission skills. He was just a very, very well-rounded fighter that fought the best guys in the heavyweight division.”

While reports surfaced years ago about RIZIN trying to ink a deal with Couture for a Fedor fight, “The Natural” clarified that while the promotion may have wanted to book the bout, he never actually received an offer.

“I never got an offer from RIZIN, maybe it was something they thought about, but they never reached out to me or my team,” said Couture. “Obviously when Fedor came back out of retirement [in 2015], my phone rang a lot.”

Couture, of course, was the driving force behind the initial push to make the fight happen years earlier. “Obviously a lot of rankings had him ranked #1 in the world and me ranked #2, so I was pushing the UFC, like ‘look this is the fight I want, I want to be the #1 guy in the world. I want to fight the best guys in the world, so make this fight happen.'”

While the UFC threw considerable money at Fedor, Couture added that “there were a lot of ancillary things that the M-1 group that owned his contract wanted, and the UFC wasn’t willing to concede on any of those things. So the fight never happened.” When Couture attempted to leave the promotion and make the fight happen elsewhere, as has been well-documented, “they filed injunctions and all that and were trying to bleed me of money, knowing that I didn’t have a bottomless pit of funds to try and make that fight happen.”

“So at some point, push comes to shove. The window was closing for me to continue to compete at that level. I had to make a decision — it was obvious the fight wasn’t going to happen, and I just had to let go of that.”

To this day, Couture sees Fedor as a “great example of what a martial artist is supposed to be like.” And while for many fans, Fedor vs. Couture is the fight that got away, “The Natural” has no regrets. “I wouldn’t even call that a regret. Yeah, that’s the fight I wanted at that time, I had to come to terms with the likelihood that that was never going to happen, and move on. So I wouldn’t call it a regret.”

Couture feels he did everything he set out to accomplish in the sport. Now, he’s transitioned to an on air career in the broadcast booth. And he continues to find work as an actor, reprising his role as Toll Road in the next Expendables movie.

“Amazing. Had a great time,” Couture said of the fourth film in the franchise, which just wrapped shooting. “I’m excited to see it. There’s only four original Expendables left in this one: myself, Jason Stathem, Dolph Lundgren, and obviously Sylvester Stallone. Some new faces showing up— an absolute honor and pleasure to get to know and work with Andy Garcia in this one, Megan Fox, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, had a great time working with all of them.”

And while there has been talk of this being the final instalment of the franchise, Couture believes there could be a fifth film. “I think you’re seeing a little transition from Sly being the predominant character in all the Expendables, and you’re seeing a little shift now to Jason Statham.” But, Couture added, “I don’t think Sly’s going away. I think Sly is always going to be a part of this property one way or another. He’s the one that developed it, he wrote the first script, and he’s heavily involved in this intellectual property, so I don’t see that going away, at least I hope that doesn’t go away.”

Calling Stallone an “amazing guy” to work with and get to know, Couture believes “there will be another one. I think this one’s going to do very, very well at the box office. Obviously at the end of the day, it’s a business decision. I think if this one does well at the box office, then you’re absolutely going to see Expendables 5.”

Watch our full interview with PFL Challenger Series judge and UFC Hall of Fame member Randy Couture above.

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