By DANNY O’NEIL
\nP-I REPORTER<\/p>\n
Randy Couture has been called”The Natural”and”Captain America”and he could be called the toughest guy to ever come from our state. He was a state champion in wrestling in 1981 while at Lynnwood High School and a three-time U.S. Olympic team alternate in Greco-Roman wrestling. But these days, he is best known for being a champion in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. He announced his retirement earlier this year.<\/p>\n
Q: So what does a retired fighter do? <\/strong><\/p>\n Couture:<\/strong> I’m ready to kind of move on and open a new chapter in my life. At 42, almost 43 years old, I think it’s time to do something else. To think about other things and certainly there’s a lot of options with the sport’s popularity. It seems like a good time to make a transition.<\/p>\n Q: Some of those possibilities are in acting. You were in a movie with Steven Seagal, right? <\/strong><\/p>\n Couture:<\/strong> That’s true. We did a movie this last year called,”Today You Die.”It went straight to video. It has been played on TV recently. I also did “Cradle 2 the Grave”a few years ago with Jet Li and (rapper) DMX, a couple of episodes of”Oz,”and I had my first kind of major role in an independent film called”No Rules.”You can buy that online. I just landed a part in a Rob Schneider movie that we’ll film this summer.<\/p>\n Q: Please don’t tell us you let Seagal beat up on you. <\/strong><\/p>\n Couture:<\/strong> Well … that’s why it is called a Steven Seagal movie. I was one of the bad-guy bodyguards who got his butt whooped by Steven Seagal.<\/p>\n Dana White, the president of the UFC, called me when it came out on video. He was like,”You wimp, you got your (butt) kicked by Steven Seagal.”He left a message on my phone so I called him back, and I was like,”Who’s the bigger wimp, the guy sitting on his couch watching Steve Seagal or the guy in the movie?”<\/p>\n Q: You’ve been involved in the sport awhile. What’s it like to see what’s happening with the sport’s exposure and popularity it is experiencing?<\/strong><\/p>\n Couture:<\/strong> The sport has changed immensely, largely I think due to the new owners from ZUFFA. They’re not so new now. They’ve owned it for a few years. But from my perspective, I can’t go anywhere without being recognized, without being stopped to take a picture, sign an autograph, and that’s certainly a new and different experience for me.<\/p>\n It’s a pretty fun time to be involved in the sport. There’s a lot of opportunities and a lot of pretty neat things going on. The sport is growing immensely. I think you will see that trend continue. It’s becoming the combative sport of the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By DANNY O’NEIL P-I REPORTER Randy Couture has been called”The Natural”and”Captain America”and he could be called the toughest guy to ever come from our state. He was a state champion in wrestling in 1981 while at Lynnwood High School and a three-time U.S. Olympic team alternate in Greco-Roman wrestling. But these days, he is best […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wrestling"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2B7Di-zv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}