Insight with Chris Van Vliet - Randy Couture on Brock Lesnar, Jake & Logan Paul and Why You Should Always Trust Your Gut

Episode Date: September 15, 2021

Randy Couture is a UFC Hall of Famer, actor and former US Army Sargeant. His new movie called "The Manson Brothers Midnight Zombie Massacre" is available in theaters and on VOD. He joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about his Hall of Fame career in the UFC, transitioning into becoming an actor, his role in "The Expendables" franchise, his thoughts on how Jake & Logan Paul are changing fighting, whether or not he would want to fight again, his match against Brock Lesnar for the UFC Heavyweight Championship, his legendary matchups with Chuck Liddell and much more! If you enjoyed this episode, could I ask you to please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcast/iTunes? It takes less than a minute and makes a huge difference in helping to spread the word about the show and also to convince some hard-to-get guests.  For more information about Chris and INSIGHT go to: https://chrisvanvliet.com Follow CVV on social media: Instagram: instagram.com/ChrisVanVliet Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisVanVliet YouTube: youtube.com/ChrisVanVliet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All systems are go. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Van Blin. Boom, here we go, my friends. Welcome back to another audio adventure on Insight. Thank you so much for being with us. I'm Chris Van Fleet, and I feel like with today's guest, this is so much more than just a podcast. I feel like we should be calling this a goat cast.

Oh, yeah, we're joined today by one of the all-time greats in mixed martial arts, the UFC Hall of Famer and also former heavyweight and lighthead. heavyweight champion, Randy the natural Cotour. His new movie called The Manson Brothers Midnight Zombie Massacre, which he stars in with fellow UFC Hall of Famer, Boz Routen, and bodybuilding legend Mike O'Hern, is in theaters now and available on video on demand. If you're not following him already on social media, you can find Randy on Twitter at Randy underscore Cotour.

On Instagram, he's XC. Natch, as in extreme Couture Natural, XC. That might have taken a while for you to find. I'm at Chris Van Fleet. Seems easy to find.

I'm also on TikTok right now, if you happen to be on there. Chris dot Van Fleet on TikTok. And please take a second today to like or subscribe to this show wherever you're listening right now. And if it happens to be Apple Podcasts, please, please take a second today to leave a review on there. like this one from Ralph Stark One. He says, beautiful and wonderful podcast.

He always asks the right questions and gets the answers I need from the interviews. I actually met you at the PPW show, and I hope that you remember me, and you're truly appreciated. I recommend this podcast to you die-hard wrestling fans like myself. Take care and a pleasure meeting you. Of course, I remember meeting you at PPW.

I told you, if you left a review, I would read it out on the show, so here we go. I appreciate you, man. You're awesome. You're awesome, Ralph. And if you're listening to this and you have a few extra seconds in your day, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. I'll keep reading one out on every single episode for free. Yeah, for free, by the way. So if you're listening on Apple right now, it'd be so awesome if you could do that. All right. You ready? Let's do it. Please, welcome. What a great conversation, by the way. Randy, the natural go tour. Randy, thank you so much for joining us. You bet, man. Thank you. I appreciate you having me on.

Of course. You know, I got to tell you, I'm originally from Toronto, and I was there at your retirement match at Rogers Center. Yeah, so I was there. What a fight. What a career. And I'm curious for you, when you were going into that match at Skydome or at Rogers Center, did you know what was going to come after that?

Did you know what was going to be, you've been very successful with your retirement? Did you know what was going to come next? Well, I had a, you know, you never really know. It took me a while to warm up with the whole idea of walking away from the sport that I'd been involved in for so long. Literally, you know, I had every injury I'd ever had kind of flare up in the James Tony camp. And it was the first time my brain started saying, hey, maybe that's your body telling you you should do something else. And, you know, again, I fought for another two years after that fight. I was like, well, you know, I think once that conversation starts, you've got to kind of take it seriously.

But yeah, I was comfortable that I was making the right decision for me, walking away from the sport on my own terms. You didn't have a doctor or promoter telling me I shouldn't do it anymore. But and that transition for a lot of people is a huge task. It's a big problem. It's a big piece of your identity in that uniform, you know, those shorts going up into that cage. grinding out another camp. So thankfully I had acting. I'd been acting for gosh at that point, you know, 15 years. And so I could just shift my focus from getting another fight and grinding out another camp to get another movie and being as sharp and prepared as I could be for that.

We all know what it looks like when you prepare for a fight. Like everybody knows what a training camp looks like or cutting weight or something like that. But what's it look like when you train for a role? get a script, where does it begin for you there? Well, obviously, reading, you know, reading the story, understanding your character and how your character fits into the story, finding a way to relate to that character. Because at the end of the day, you're trying to find a way to tell the truth. If you're trying to act, nobody's going to buy it. It's not going to work.

So in some ways, I mean, you look at some of the best actors you can name. A lot of their characters are very similar because, you know, at the end of the day, they're trying to find a way to tell the truth. That has been the biggest challenge for me in acting because I've spent my whole life as an athlete boxing up my emotions, pushing them to the side and laser focused on the task at hand of the problem in front of me. And now they want to let all that stuff out. So it's a little weird, honestly.

But it's been fun. It's been fun, you know, learning so much about the process. And it is a process. you know, continue to get better each and every time I put myself out there. And, yeah, just look through those wrestlers, those fighters' eyes and have that mindset, solve the problems, try and tell the truth and be as honest as you can't. In the background here, by the way, are we hearing roosters? Is that what that is?

Yeah, my, I ordered about 15 chickens last a year. And, you know, as chicks, they literally come and have. hatch right in front of you, which is pretty amazing. And I'm hoping you think odds would be 50, 50 would be roosters and hens. Sure. You wanted the hens. Went up with one hen, 14 roosters. So I've had to whack a few roosters.

I've got a few roosters in the freezer now. That's one popular hen in that henhouse, I bet. Yeah, well, she didn't do so well. They were pretty rough on her. Actually, we had forest fires here this summer, and one of the forest fires was actually very, very close to the house, which was very concerning. And the one hen we had was overcome by the smoke. That's how close the fire was.

Wow. Yeah. I'm glad you guys are okay. Yeah. Well, so are we. We were real worried. We had everything set. You know, we were on ready notice to evacuate.

It was that close. So we had the horse trailer all hooked up and a lot of the food supplies and stuff we have here all ready to go to be able to load it all and get out of here if we had to get out of here. Thankfully, it didn't come. I would imagine that your transition into acting has been a lot of because of who you were as a fighter. A lot of those roles are coming to you because of the name that you built for yourself there. What was the role that you took on and you kind of went, all right, I'm no longer a fighter who's trying to be an actor. I'm an actor now. Yeah. I think the big role that kind of headed me in the right direction and started helping me get more jobs with Scorpion King too.

Playing Sargon, the bad guy in that in that sword and sandal type movie. It was a big universal property that summer with the whole mummy. They had all the sequels coming out for the mummy and that was kind of part of that that whole big thing. It was a huge movie for them. That DVD was one of their best sellers that summer. And that certainly set my, you know, set my raid and gave me a little bit of a push to continue to get jobs like the expendables and Red Belt

and some of these other big steps up from what I had been doing before that. Are there any similarities between the world of fighting and the world of Hollywood? I think you have to be coachable. Like we've talked about, it's competitive. You're going to read against, you know, certainly trying to move up and read for Marvel films

and some of the bigger films that are going on in the world in that industry right now. That's a competitive industry. So again, that taps into that fight mindset that I had before. I could transition and compete, try and be as prepared as I could be. They all, you know, one hand kind of washes the other. I think the Army being diligent, you know, being dressed and ready to go, knowing my lines, I like to be first on set and know exactly what we're doing

that day. And those are all things that came from fighting, that came from wrestling, that came from being in the service. And you look at the world in a particular way because of those experiences, and you apply that to everything you face. Yeah. I feel like when you look at your career, you've been at the top of everything that you've done, whether it's being a service member or fighting or now acting. When you look at your career now in acting, what are the goals that you have laid out for yourself? I want the challenge. you know, like you said, everybody wants to put me in that box. Oh, yeah, he's one of those fighters.

He brings that authenticity and physicality to those kind of action roles. And I love that genre. I'm perfectly fine with that, but I want the challenge. I want to do the romantic comedy or the comedy, the Western, some of those things that most people wouldn't see me in. And that's the cool thing about the Manson Brothers, is it's a step outside the box for me. It's comedic.

you know and if I was trying to be funny it would never sell but that's good writing Mike and Chris did a great job of developing that script and putting me in situations where I can just kind of be myself or be this character which is not that far removed from myself and that allows it I mean I think that made it funny I had a great time doing that well in the Manson brothers Midnight Zombie Masker you play a wrestler and I feel like there was probably the chance as you were either in UFC or transitioning out of UFC to get into WWE or into wrestling. Was that ever an option for you? You know, they never really approached me. I never received a message or had, you know, asked, they never asked me to come to a show

or to check it out, honestly. And I don't know if they knew because of my amateur wrestling background that I probably wasn't going to be too interested in that. But it's hard to say. Yeah, certainly know the amateur wrestling ranks and the Olympic wrestling as well as anybody. I chased that dream for 16 plus years. But the pro wrestling thing never, it was just never something that bit me. I was never, I watched it a little as a kid, but even as a kid, I knew this, this doesn't seem right. There's something not quite right about this. So it's just not something that tickled me.

It just seemed like the perfect venue for you versus Brock again. Yeah. Yeah, that would have been interesting. Right. Who is the wrestler or the character that you modeled your character in Manson Brothers after? You know, I don't, I didn't think, I don't know one of those guys well enough. Steve Austin's probably the only one I know very well from Expendables One. Yeah.

I've spent a lot of time with him and had the big fight scene at the end of the movie with him. But even in that, you know. There's different sitting with the guy talking to the guy all the time than the Steve Austin that you see it at WWE match. But, you know, I just, I thought Tom Hanson was an interesting character. He's kind of this grizzled old bet. Certainly at that stage in my life, after 14 years of, you know, more than 14 years of fighting, I could relate to his attitude about now he's coming down the back hill, you know, the downhill side back in the bush leagues when he'd been all the way up at the top.

And, you know, so it wasn't too hard to find thump. If we take this way back, Randy, who was the person early on in your life that gave you the confidence to pursue these things that you pursued and pursue them at the highest level? I think my mom. My mom was a single parent. She raised three kids. I was the oldest and only male in the family. So the chore list was doled out to me

And learning, you know, make sure you had all those chores done before mom got home from work. You know, I grew up with a lot of babysitters as a younger kid, But then I became the babysitter as I got older. So there was some responsibility as the oldest of three kids With a single parent kind of running the show. I was the next in line, so to speak. So I think that I learned that work ethic for my mother,

My mom was working two jobs to support us by herself. She got very little help from anybody. So I think that a lot of that translated to me. And, you know, I think some of those things you have to look at and find us blessings. They made me who I am. Well, UFC or MMA wasn't a thing at all when you were growing up. What did you think you were going to be? Yeah, I think originally I was really into the outdoors.

You know, I started hunting with my dad when I was six. I was headed towards being a zoologist or in the forest service or something like that where I could work in the outdoors on a regular basis. I was really interested in flying in junior high and high school, which was one of the things that led me to the Army. I knew that I could go to flight school, become a helicopter pilot and fly for the Army. And that skill would translate then to maybe flying for the Forest Service or fishing game or something like that. So as a younger man, those were the things I was thinking about. And then, of course, the Olympic being an Olympian, that bit being, as a young man, it was skiing. That was my favorite sport as a kid.

I started skiing at five years old. And I wanted to be an Olympic skier. And so the mayor brothers who were from White Pass, Washington, and John Claude Keely, Franz Klamer, these were the guys that win all the World Cup medals and the Olympic medal skiing at that time. Those were the guys. I was glued to the TV watch. Lo of behold, I ended up on a wrestling mat. Skiing was a pretty expensive endeavor for a single parent.

And we did ski. It was one of my favorite sports, but to afford three sets of skis and seasons pass and instruction and how to race and all that sort of thing was way above us. So I just enjoyed the sport and then focused on a wrestler. I heard my whole life, what a great wrestler my dad was. And so I thought, well, maybe if I wrestle, he'll come around. He'll pay attention. That didn't really work out.

You never saw me wrestle a match. But I found the place where I was pretty comfortable that seemed to be my vocation or my calling in life on that wrestling mat. And that ultimately led me down the road. Think of how different your life would have been had you guys had maybe just a little bit more money and you went down that path of trying to be an Olympic skier. Yeah, you could go a whole bunch of different ways. You look back in your life. Now, I had no scholarships for college out of high school. I was a one-time state champion from Washington.

I got nobody's attention, honestly. I had the opportunity to go to San Ana Junior College and wrestle for the junior college there on a scholarship. And then they were a feeder program for Oklahoma State at that time. The California Junior College programs were really, really strong back then in the 80s. And then I ultimately, via the Army and having a child and wearing that uniform, ended up at Oklahoma State. But there was this other alley that might have taken me to that same place had I made different choices back then. It's pretty interesting.

It's so interesting. It's so fascinating to think about life in that way. Think about if MMA or UFC had been popularized when you were coming up, when you were a teenager, how different do you think your life would have looked? then. Yeah, I really wonder if I would have forayed into the sport back then. I was still a lot in trying to become a decent wrestler. You know, as a one-time state champ, I'd never won a national title or been involved in the national level of sport of wrestling. I often say, you know, things turn out the way they should have turned out. I ended up in the Army. I ended up on a wrestling mat again when I thought wrestling was done for me.

I think competing internationally as a service member becoming an alternate on that 88 Olympic team as a soldier gave me the confidence that I could compete at that level on the international stage that I didn't have before. And going from there, getting a scholarship offer to go to Oklahoma State and wrestle there for four years, I think it was that four years that I learned I could not just compete but win at that level. So it was incremental, you know, things worked out, unfold. and slowly I became this person that could compete at that level, and that ultimately led me into the ultimate fighting in MMA. What do you think was the match in UFC that really put you on the map? Probably, I think that that first Belford fight in my second UFC show in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, set the tone for my entire MMA career.

Nobody expected me to win that match. I was 34 years old by everybody's estimation. I was already over the hill athletically by those standards back then, especially in a combative sport like MMA. So, you know, you just don't know. You don't know how things are going to unfold, where things are going to take you. That match set the tone.

It was a huge underdog. Everybody thought I was going to get my butt whoop by this young 19-year-old that was blasting through everybody and through the course of that eight minutes, I think I won a lot of people over. They didn't expect me to win. But that seemed to be the theme throughout the rest of my career

because I was the older athlete, fighting much bigger guys. I was the underdog most of my career. The United States Soccer Federation presents the U.S. soccer podcast. My name is David Goss, and I'm joined by my co-host, Megan Klinberg. And now we're giving people an inside look

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I think the other theme throughout your entire career is you're not afraid to reinvent yourself. Like going into the UFC at a later age, it would have been so easy to go, yeah, one or two matches, we'll see where it goes. and then you believe people when they say you're too old for this. And now you've reinvented yourself as an actor as well. Talk me through that process. How do you get over that fear of going, this is who I am and this is who I'm going to remain?

Yeah, and I think that's exactly what it is. It's a fear, a fear of failing. We all have that little voice in our head, that self-talk, and that little voice can be brutal, you know, especially as a kid that was raised a single parent household who had some, some worth issues with a, you know,

a kind of a deadbeat dad, there were some obstacles there I had to overcome for sure, both psychologically, you know, in that first, that programming from my early years, and developing that confidence to put myself out there, you know,

I think winning that first state title was a huge step. It's like I learned, did all that on my own, you know, I sat down with my, mom said hey mom you know i really want to win a state championship this year was my senior year in high school but i was working a job at the grocery store had to pay my own car insurance and gas money and and and all that stuff and kind of had some responsibilities and i knew if i wanted to up my game and

and have a shot at being in the state championship i had to do some extra work she bought me a old plastic weight set from sears and i had a uh the old Arnold Schwarzenegger workout book, the encyclopedia of body build started putting together workouts with that old plastic and do an extra running

and I set my goals on this is what I want to do and my mom said, okay, you can quit your job. I'll cover those expenses during wrestling season. She allowed me, believed in me enough,

allowed me to set out to achieve that goal. And then after I made it, it was like I had the blueprint. Okay, is how this works. I had no idea. It was literally a stab in the dark. But that, you know, that plan and putting myself out there potentially losing, you know, was an option. And so I had to make terms with, you know, come to terms with that, make friends with that. And I think that was

the first time I ever put all those pieces together and did that. And so then I was just a matter of finding the next thing I wanted to set my mind to and following that same blueprint. And then refurbishing it, fashioning it, polishing it, making it better and more streamlined as I got better and better moving down the line. I just think there's so many people that maybe they're in their mid-30s or early 40s and they go, I don't love my job, but it's all I know, I'm too scared to go move on to something else. How do you get over that? Yeah. Yeah, I think the more responsibility you have on your shoulders, it becomes more and more difficult to do things like that, to rock the boat, to start over, to, you know, I think that's why getting out of the service was such a huge

decision for me. Yeah. 25 years old, was I going to keep, you know, stay in the service? I had two kids by that time. Was I going to, you know, keep taking care of my family the way I needed to, but still chasing that Olympic dream with the Army's support, the Army's help? What was I going to get out and go take a risk and get a college degree? wrestle at Oklahoma State was a big decision, a big scary decision.

Probably one of the biggest ones I ever made, honestly. I chose to get out and make a run at it. Again, the rest is history. You just keep putting yourself out there and hoping for the best. What do you think is the one match in your UFC career that most people know you for or want to ask you about? I would probably any of the three Chuck Waddell fights because that, especially the second and the third one because the ultimate fighter had hit.

It was a whole new fan base interested in the sport. And so those are the ones that a lot of people saw were those two. They didn't see the first one, which is obviously my favorite. And then the Tim Sylvia fight. I think that was the biggest crowd we'd ever had at that stage of things. Again, most people counted me out. I was 44 years old. they thought, man, and Tim at six foot eight, you know.

That looked like David versus Goliath. That was mutton Jeff out there for sure. Again, one of those times my mom looked at me like, what are you doing? Are you crazy? So, but again, you know, things worked out. I feel like throughout your entire career, you weren't as like mean or angry as most of your opponents were. Did anyone ever tell you like, ah, you need a little bit more of an edge here?

Randy? Well, I think some of that come from my wrestling mentality. I had to wrestle some of my best friends for the spot on the team. One of us was going home pissed off. I mean, that's just the way it is in the sport of wrestling. And so it was never one of those guys had to generate a bunch of animosity or run my mouth and any of that to go out and fight. For me, it was just an extension of wrestling, a little bit different rules of engagement,

but a very similar tactical sport. So I just applied that wrestling mindset to that and kept that same attitude. I wanted to be me. I didn't want to create a persona or any of these things that some of the guys were doing to market themselves. I've just tried to keep it simple. And I think a lot of fans appreciated that. MMA's changed so much since when you got into it.

And I'm sure it's going to keep evolving and changing over the next 10, 15, 20 years. What do you think about where it's at right now? I mean, the big money fights right now, in boxing at least, are with Logan Paul and Jake Paul. What do you think of what's going on? Yeah, these crossover fights, you know, obviously the first guy that only got to come the other way was James Tony in 2008 in Boston. And it was a huge fight, a fight that I took very seriously. I felt like, you know, the reputation of our sport was on the line in some ways for that fight.

I had a lot of respect for James as a boxer. The real question was how much MMA was he really going to be able to learn? And I think we answered that question pretty quickly. But now we got these, you know, just saw Anderson Silva and Tito, you know, Vitor Belfort against Avander, Holyfield. I mean, holy cow. These trillers, you know, that's Anderson's second great fight in boxing. We've always known Belfort was a solid striker. I mean, that's one of the things you had to really focus on when you were facing him in M.MA.

He showed those skills again on Saturday against Abander. You know, I'm not a fan of all the antics and the rhetoric and all that from the Paul brothers. But if they are doing something, it's poking Dana White and shining a light on the disparaging difference between fighting fighters pay in MMA versus fighters pay in boxing. There's no transparency in MMA. How are you supposed to negotiate your fair value in the marketplace if nobody knows how much money is being made in the sport in each and every event? Men. Those are that transparency is in boxing because of the Ali Act that was implemented in 1996 to protect boxers from, from promoters like Aram and Don King that were taking advantage of a lot of the boxing world. We don't enjoy those luxuries and those protections from that federal legislation in M.A. I think that the Fratidis knew exactly what they were looking at in 2001 when they bought the company.

In 96, when the Allie Act was implemented, Lorenzo Furtita was the Nevada State Athletic Commission Commissioner. He was in charge of the whole show back then. So he knew exactly what was going on. And, you know, when they sold the company in 2016 for $4.2 billion, they got a lot of people's attention, especially a lot of fighters going, what? Holy cow. Yeah.

So we need that transparency. We need that same protection from that same. federal legislation in the sport of mixed martial arts and all the combative sports. Why not? It's an easy thing to change the definition of that legislation to combatant to athletes instead of just boxing. It would just some of the language because the rounds in MMA and some of the other sports that are doing pay-per-view in combative sports are different as well.

But other than that, it's a simple fix. So, you know, we're blobbing hard to try and get that. to a vote in Congress and then on the Senate floor, obviously with the relationship between Trump and Dana White, it was going to be very difficult to get that done during that administration. But we're not having much success now either because the UFC still got lobbyists working against us, got us thrown out of energy in commerce, which is where the Allie Act was originally implemented. You know, they're doing their due diligence to keep this from getting to a vote because if anybody really looks at the situation, it's a no-brainer.

Yeah. We had 60 Congress people on both sides of the aisle ready to vote on this because it is so stark and obvious that we need some transparency and protections for mixed martial artists as well. With you talking about all of this, does this mean that you now have some sort of a relationship with UFC? I have no relationship with the UFC, and that's largely because of Dana White. He decided that I was the enemy quite a while ago. Actually, when they bought the company,

we butted heads almost immediately over ancillary rights and contracts. Nobody else was paying attention at that time when they were, I'm not sure who was holding whose feet to the fire back then, but we weren't getting along very well. I think they felt like they were stuck with me. When they bought the company, I was the heavyweight champion. I just signed with new management. We started pointing out a lot of the issues.

using this 17-page piece of crap document that they call the contract. And, you know, I'm one of the few fighters that owns his own ancillary rights, and we kind of forced them to adjust some things. Now, some of that was okay for me, but the backlash of that was they tightened up their contracts. They made their contracts even worse than they were before because I was poking them about ancillary rights and some of this other stuff. So that kind of sucks for all the other fighters that weren't paying attention in fighting didn't have the leverage.

I had the leverage at that time because I was their heavyweight champion to kind of push some of those issues. But that went by the wayside. Nobody else took up that mantle or tried to fight for their own ancillary rights or their own issues with those contracts. Now, obviously, you've got guys like John Jones

and others that are chirping about the pay. Logan Paul and Jake Paul are poking day-in-on-a-regular, you know, guys like Ben Asking and Tyrone Woodley make more money from one box match and they've ever made in their entire MMA career, there's a spark problem in our sport. So, you know, if it takes a guy like Jake Paul to highlight that and bring that to the forefront, I'm going to get behind that.

With all those names that you've mentioned, those legendary MMA fighters who are now boxing, will we ever see your name added to that list? We do want to get into the ring and the boxing match? Yeah, honestly, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. You know, I retired and came back. back once in my career. I can't really see doing that again, especially at 58.

I'm 10 years out now. I haven't been in fight shape. And let's be honest, fight shape is a pretty real thing. I'm in great shape for the average guy walking around at 58 for sure. But fight shape is a whole different animal. And so to think that I'm going to go back out and get in fight shape to go try one of these crossover boxing matches or try MMA again,

And I just, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I put a lot of wear and tear on this body through years of wrestling and fighting. I think coming to terms with that and walking away when I did going out on my own terms was a, was a good thing. And I want to stick to that. You look like you're in amazing shape. So what's the day to day look like for you now? Doing a lot of body weight stuff, you know, not a lot of heavy lifting. I don't do a lot of hard sparring anymore, you know, a lot of hard grappling anymore either.

to be honest, the discs in the neck are pretty worn out. And there's no way to do that halfway. You're either doing it or you're not doing it. It becomes difficult to do halfway. So I have to take care of the neck. I don't really want to have to have a neck surgery. Most of the guys I've seen have those fusions or have those disc surgeries are no happier or no better off after doing them.

So I'm trying to take care of the neck and not put a lot of stress on it if I can help it. Thankfully, you know, movie work, you can just say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I didn't like that. Let's do another take. Well, let's bring in the stunt guy. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So how much training was there to be, get into wrestling shape for the Manson Brothers movie?

I was already in pretty good shape, you know, I train regular. It keeps me sane. So I didn't have to do anything special for the, for the Manson Brothers movie. I was pretty lean and in pretty good shape. You know, it might have been. six months after I retired that I got a little thicker in the middle

but quickly changed my eating habits I started doing the intermittent fasting and that allowed me to stay lean when I wasn't able to train the way I was used to training. So I didn't have to do a whole lot for the Manson brothers. I was in pretty great shape

walking into that, certainly for the camera. So, you know, on film, with guys like Stallone who's, you know, 75, I think, and in an amazing shape for a guy his age. My young, sorry, but can't walk into a set like that, you know, with Dunlops and, you know, trying to go up two pants sizes. It's just not going to work.

So I've got to stay in shape. What's the most you've ever weighed? 233. And I got out of the Army that summer. Yeah. I spent two months sitting on my butt doing nothing, drinking. beer and I rode into Oklahoma State. I was stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

I rode in that August from Fort Campbell into Stillwater, Oklahoma in time for the opening season barbecue with the team, rolled into the barbecue and a bunch of the guys are like, who's the new heavyweight? Wow. Yeah, I was at 233. I was wrestling 190 for those guys. So obviously, you had to clean up a few. things and get my happy butt back in shape pretty quick.

Did you always feel more comfortable at light heavy than at heavyweight? You know, it was just a difference in solving the problem. The heavyweight guys early on weren't terribly conditioned or in great shape, but you still didn't want to stand around in front, great big guys like that. But you could exploit their lack of mobility or sometimes their lack of conditioning. And then as the sport evolved and progressed, Those guys weren't just big guys.

They were very good athletes and very good tacticians. And so that's around the time. It made a lot of sense for me to start coming down and fighting that 205 and fighting guys my own size. And again, developing, getting better, skill-wise, mentality-wise, then pouring back up into the heavyweight division with a little more sense of who I was as a fighter as an athlete and what I was capable of.

I never, you know, never worried about fighting the bigger guys. You just had to be a little different about your approach with guys like Tim Sylvia or Brock Lesnar, you know, they're not just great big guys. They're very skilled fighters. And so you had to approach them a little bit differently and try to make each one of those guys wrestle me as much as possible. Yeah. I felt like you were winning the Brock Lesnar match.

I definitely feel like I had him going. Yeah. He didn't with that left hook and cut him. And I saw that look in his eye. He, like, looked at the blood. He couldn't believe he was bleeding. I think, honestly, I had him up. And if he hadn't to grab the fence in that first round,

I think he might have hit his back. And it would have been really interesting to see how he would respond to having a wrestler on top of him, punching him in the face and how that fight might have gone differently from that point on. Yeah. I've thoroughly enjoyed this, Randy. This has been so great. And I have just a few more questions for you as we wrap this up.

First of all, the Manson Brothers, Midnight Zombie Massacres available in select theaters and also available on video on demand. And I encourage everybody to see it. And you do an amazing job in this. With you nailing this role, I'm curious, what's the dream acting gig for you now? Well, I'm very excited to be leaving here in a couple weeks for Europe for Expendables 4. Toll Road Rides Again. It's going to be a fun movie. The script is insane.

I've said that every single time I've read one of these scripts. I'm like, how are we going to do this? They just keep taking it up another notch. Yeah, and this one's going to be no exception. So I'm excited to get back at that. And that's a fun character. You know, I felt so honored that Sly left me in because he brought me in originally for Hail Caesar.

That role was written for Wesley Snipes. Wesley was having some issues at that time. he was going to adjust that role to fit me, this college educated guy that was a wrestler that talked about his cauliflower ear and quotes Nietzsche and all this crazy stuff. And he ended up getting Terry Cruz. And rather than just leave me out, he wrote Toll Road into the film.

So I was like, wow, I was stunned that he went to that extra effort just to keep me involved. And then Toll Road kind of came to life. I had that big monologue in that first episode of the expendables one, which was a huge deal for me. I spent months learning that monologue, and then he rewrote it the day we shot it.

Oh, no. So Terry Cruz actually helped me read a ton of the new version because he had some pretty significant lines in that big scene too in the garage, me talking about it in easy being green. But, yeah, obviously raised the bar for me being a part of a huge ensemble cast like that was a huge honor and a great learning experience. Being around guys like Willis, Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Statham, Jetley,

these are guys that have been at the top of this industry for a very long time. There's a reason for that. They're diligent. They treat it as a profession. They're very serious about what they do. They know their wheelhouse. And so they were great guys to be around on set and see their approach to this. profession. I would love to do a romantic comedy. Play the lead in a romantic comedy. Again,

do something outside the box that most people would go, my God, that's that guy. And I think, you know, stepping out, doing dancing with the stars, lip sync battle, whose line is it anyway, those kinds of things that show that other side of my personality, not just a guy that walks up in a cage and punches somebody in the face, has been instrumental in, you know, creating a bigger fan base, but giving people a different side of who I am and what I could possibly do in the acting world. Yeah, I love it. And my final question, I end every interview talking about gratitude because I start and end every day saying out loud three things that I'm grateful for. So I end every interview with this. What are three things in your life, Randy, that you're

grateful for right now? I'm grateful that I had the mother that I had with the fortitude that she possessed to persevere and raise three kids and do a pretty dang good job of it by herself. I'm thankful for my kids. I have three amazing children, put them through divorces and all kinds of stuff. And again, they're amazing humans. And I'm very proud of them and thankful for them. And then I'm just thankful for the opportunities that have been bestowed upon me. you know i feel very fortunate to have been all the places i've been met the key people in in this journey in the different stages and phases i feel like a cat sometime i think i lived about nine of my seven lives i got two left so i'm trying to be very diligent about about those last two

thank you so much ray this has been such an honor such a pleasure so i really appreciate your time you have man thanks for having me on i really appreciate you oh man What a guy. What a conversation. Don't be afraid to reinvent yourself. I love it. Randy did it in the Army. He did it as an amateur wrestler.

He did it in the UFC in both the light heavyweight and heavyweight divisions. And now he's doing it as an actor. Thank you so much for being with us on this episode. Big thank you, of course, to Randy for joining us as well. It's just so many powerful takeaways from this conversation. So please share this episode with somebody that you, know we'll love it. Either from my website,

Chris VanVleet.com, or snap a screenshot and share it on social media. Tag us. Randy's at Randy underscore Couture on Instagram. He's at XC. Natch, N-A-T-C-H

on Instagram, and I'm at Chris Van Fleet. We'll leave you the words from George Elliott, who famously said, it is never too late to be what you might have been. It is never too late

to be what you might have been. Be great. Be grateful. We'll see you on the next one for some more insight. The Hammer Alley podcast, an 80s flashback mockumentary. Back in the 80s, there were a thousand bands trying to make it in the world of rock, but there was one band that had it all. Hammer Alley. Whatever happened to Hammer Alley?

How did they go from top of the rock? I'm looking for a music video. They're a band from 1987. Hammer Alley. heard of then to rock bottom dude i was born in nineteen eighty seven i can't believe he's doing this hammer alley follow and listen on your favorite platform