After fighting in an instant classic showdown against Antonio Nogueira, Randy Couture had one fight left on his contract, or so we thought. Randy and Dana White spilled the beans at the UFC 102 press conference, Randy and the UFC have reached a new 6 fight-26 month deal. That is potentially three fights a year for the next two years. Randy said the UFC is the place to be, and was undecided on whether to fight at heavy or light heavy, even though Dana White kept pushing the light heavy route saying Randy could do very well. To me this is very very exciting news and can't wait to see The Naturals follow up this fight, as he still mantains a high caliber status.
The intention of this deal was NOT because Dana loves Randy's nuts and can't wait to see him fight again. This happened to keep Randy from fighting his last fight with the UFC against Nog, then leaving and signing with Strikeforce and giving them one of the biggest fights the world has seen in Fedor vs. Couture. Dana wants that fight in the UFC if it were ever to happen. Fedor only has a 3 fight deal with Strikeforce, so Dana gave Randy a 6 fight deal in hopes that either a) Fedor will finish his contract up with Strikeforce and come to the UFC and fight Randy or b) if Fedor never comes, this contract prevents Couture from ever going somewhere else to fight him while he's still "young." This contract is a career ender because no one is going to care about a Randy fight when he's 48-49. And it just plain makes sense, Dana should never let a guy like Couture go. But I'm talking about a smart business move, not just because he's such an awesome fighter. It's just good business to hoard all the popular fighters, whether they are good or not, just to keep big names out of Strikeforce and Dream.
ReplyDeleteI just hope they set up fun fights for Randy, don't give him an up and comer. Set up a Randy vs. Cro Cop, Randy vs. Anderson Silva, Randy vs. Lyoto Machida... Randy's got a long road backt to the top and one more loss would crush his chances... I'd rather see him fight the classic matchups..