Issue 092

September 2012

Randy Couture, UFC legend and three-time Olympic alternate wrestler

The Olympic Games are the pinnacle of sports around the world. Winning an Olympic medal was certainly something I always wanted to do, but I think I came to terms with not getting to compete there and put it into its proper perspective a long time ago.

I’m sure a part of the function of me chasing that Olympic dream for over 16 years trying to get into the US team, and win a wrestling medal, was a big part of my developing life as an athlete. It was how I learned to be a competitor, and the foundations were all put together in that period.

At the 1988 Games, I was an alternate on the US team, and then rolling into 1992 and 1996 I was the number-one guy in the US in my weight class, but managed to take second in the final trials. Bitterly disappointing. Obviously, in wrestling, it’s one of those sports where only the number-one guy from each country gets to compete at the Olympics.

It was a huge disappointment for me at both of those trials, but at the same time I think it’s what drove me, what motivated me and kept me hungry. When most guys were thinking about retiring at 34, I was still raring to go and setting off on mixed martial arts, still unfulfilled as an athletic competitor.

Still, seeing the guys get up on the podium at a Games, and hearing the national anthem played is still something that chokes me up, every single time I watch it.

Honestly, for me, the big team we always had to beat were the Russians, they came in to dominate both styles of wrestling, freestyle and Greco-Roman. There were other countries that were very good, but they were always challenging and vying for medals with the Russians.

The Americans always had a very, very strong freestyle team, but our Greco team did not have the depth and was not that strong, although we have had a couple of world champions in the history of Greco-Roman sport.

The Olympics in Ancient Greece were a form of culture, and the old tribes used to have to battle each other on a regular basis to defend their territories, and their countries, and they formed the Games to sharpen those skills, and find out who their best warriors were. Today, of course, there is not so much at stake because it is no longer a matter of life or death, and they are much more about athletes today. But, in a lot of ways, it’s still the same kind of bragging rights that apply and, in some ways, there’s still an element of that.

Who has the strongest warriors, the best competitors, and that’s how the Games grew. We even see that on some of the UFC cards, with the Brazilians against Americans and Canadians. There is still that undertone of bragging rights.

There has been a movement to include MMA in the Olympics, and I believe it would be interesting. It would be a watered-down version of what we see in the professional ranks – a different scoring system, a little more protective gear, and it’s not that we aren’t aware of the safety factor in the professional sport for fighters. But the Olympic Games committees and the International Olympic Committee will usually take that a couple of steps further, and as you start adding those elements you begin to change the sport a little bit.

It would still be dynamic, but with guys wearing headgear it would be sanitized a little bit. That said, I still think it would still be interesting. 

I would love to see a form of mixed martial arts as an exhibition sport and see how it is received and, at that point, we would only be one step away from being a full medal sport.  

We would have come full circle. To be considered a truly legitimate sport, if we made medal status in the Olympic Games, would show how far we’ve come from 17/18 years ago where we were martial artists facing each other, and there were very few rules. It would be an amazing turnaround. From where we started, to a medal sport in the Olympics.

When I did travel to the 1988, 1992 and 1996 Games as alternate, it taught me a great deal. I worked with the team, scouted for the team, and that’s where some of the analytical mentality and mindset came from when I came into MMA. It was from scouting.

We’d do a lot of team watching, we filled out data reports, watched the next guy who was competing against our number-one guy. We filled out scouting reports on what they did technically and tactically, what they got scored on, or not, how they won, how they lost… we made endless notes.

We learned to do it for years and years in the sport of wrestling. When I look back over that Olympic period, rather than disappointment, it is like a blessing to see the hunger it created, and the skills in analyzing my opponents and working out strategies to beat ‘em.