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03/02/10 - Randy: "Coleman has not changed his style in 13 years"
Randy Couture expects a vintage performance when he faces Mark Coleman in the cage at this weekend’s UFC 109 event - not least because his opponent “hasn’t changed his style in thirteen years”. Coleman was the UFC’s first-ever heavyweight champion, winning the strap way back at UFC 12 in 1997. Couture’s turn to hold the belt came at the end of that year. He beat Maurice Smith, who had taken the belt from Coleman in his first defence.
“Mark’s fighting style hasn’t changed in the thirteen years we’ve been doing this. He has got a great double leg, he is a big physical guy. He is going throw nice heavy, strong punches early on and try to set up that double leg, try to get you on your back,” Couture told Fighters Only this week as he analysed his opponent.
“He has got a great wrestler’s base so once he gets on top of you he is hard to get out from underneath. He is going to pick away at you, chip away at you and hope to steal rounds.”
While both men are former heavyweight champions, they are both at light-heavyweight for this latter stage of their careers and one feels that, for Coleman at least, a loss would put him if not into retirement, then certainly into storage until such time as the UFC needed a ‘name’ opponent for someone they are looking to
build.
At 46 years of age, Couture is the elder of the two by one year. Yet his fitness and physique puts younger men to shame and he expects it to be an edge when he faces Coleman this Saturday. Coleman is notorious for gassing in the latter rounds of fights, although he claims that will not be the case this weekend.
“I am working a lot of inside stuff against the cage, against the fence. I want to make him work under those conditions. I feel like I have a advantage there with my Greco-roman background compared to his freestyle background,” says Couture.
“[Cardio] is always a tool in my tool belt, is that I have a tendency to always be in great shape and make it hard work for my opponents. I like to work hard and make them work harder than they like to go.”
Couture vs. Coleman headlines this weekend’s UFC 109 event, which takes place at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada on Saturday night. The event will air in the US on pay-per-view.
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