Download Randy Couture Interview (MP3) 8MB

Randy Couture talks about sharpening his ground tools as he goes up against Nogueira’s BJJ. It’s inevitable the fight will get to the ground, but Couture doesn’t don’t that the fight will go the distance. He credits Nogueira’s durability and ability to go the distance so Couture will know what it takes to win the fight.

Quick snippet from the interview:

On Brock Lesnar-

Jim Rome: Do you have Brock Lesnar in the back of your mind?
Randy Couture: Uh, not in the back of my mind i mean there’s some interesting fights and people are asking me about going to 205 you know obviously Brocks walking around with the title and he kind of took that from me and I felt like I was doing all the right things in that fight to get the win and got caught with one, so that’s certainly one I’d like to try again, but uh, like you said, there’s still a lot of interesting fights in both the light heavyweight and heavyweight so we’ll see, we’ll see what happens.

Download Brock Lesnar Interview (MP3) 15MB

Snippets from the interview:

On Lesnar’s first fight with Frank Mir-

Jim Rome: Was winning the fight enough or did you have to win the fight in the fashion that you did getting pulled off him by the ref?
Brock Lesnar: Uh, I, I guess you know from the beginning i thought that that fight our first fight should have been stopped , um, i thought it was gonna end on the ground and I wanted to finish it exactly the way I thought it should have been finished and that was me pounding him out on the ground.

On losing to Frank Mir I-

Jim Rome: So it sounds like you felt like you beat yourself more then he beat you in that fight, is that accurate?
Brock Lesnar: Abosulutely, that’s how i felt, i felt like i gave him.. i almost felt like i was back in the wwe ring and i gave a guy a win that didn’t deserve to win that night, you know, and it really make me sick for a long time.

On fighting Fedor-

Jim Rome: Do you think you’re gonna get a shot at fighting Fedor?
Brock Lesnar: Ultimately someday I would hope, you know, but I want to, you know, I want to be able to get in the octagon and I think i got a lot to prove as a fighter, you know. Um.. I want to, I want to, you know, I want to get a few more fights in and i want to, you know, it’s just not, I’m not here hot shot anything you know as far as the fight business, this is a business for me first and foremost, this is how I make my living and then that’s how I look at it so we created a lot of controversy I guess post fight and you know, in some ways I look at this, was this a good uh, you know.. i have to look for the good in all of this and not retrospect and reflect on the bad. So ,utimately in the end, is there a fight? Would i accept the fight from Fedor? Absolutely.

Download BJ Penn Interview (MP3) 9MB

Snippets from the interview:

On GSP greasing it-

Jim Rome: Your final thoughts on grease-gate, you said that he was greasing in that fight.. they have since denied it. Exactly what happend that night. Was he greasing?
BJ: Um, you know that’s my opinion and i’m not the only fighter who has come on and said that- i think jason miller, sean sherk, matt hughes, i said that stuff, you know… i gotta put it behind me, i got a tough fight coming up, but uh, you know i say i feel, i believe what i say , i’m not going out there to lie, you know… the game plan i have set up for that night, there’s gonna be no reason for you to take me down, i’m gonna punish you on the ground and then you just can’t hold on to the guy, so you know, people can say what they want to do, people can say what they wanna say, you know, that’s just a poor loser this and that, you know where there’s smoke there’s fire and I’m not the only guy who said that about him.

On supposedly being rich and MMA-

Jim Rome: what is that.. it’s like if you don’t have to brawl to put food on the table, you’re not worthy, i mean is that an MMA thing? Is that a sports thing? like what’s the wrap? i kinda don’t even get the wrap?
BJ: i don’t know, it’s amazing that that’ll happen. I think it started because the UFC, maybe, this is way back in the day where me and Dana use to bicker, they use to try and push me, get me to sign certain contracts and i was like i don’t know i don’t want to do it , i don’t want to take it- and they are like ‘only because your family has money and you don’t want to take it’ and i’m thinking you know i mean i wish we had the limo, i wish we had the yaht and the private planes, but unfortunately we don’t live like that.

Download Frank Mir UFC 100 Interview

I’m one of those people who believes that when you are handicapping sports there is nothing more important than information – just getting receiving it and processing it, but knowing how to interpret it. Call it “reading between the lines,” if you will.

If you are going to bet the main event at UFC 100 on Saturday night in Las Vegas, where Brock Lesnar meets up against the only fighter to ever beat him, Frank Mir, you want the benefit of all the information you can get. That’s why you’re going to want to listen to the interview Mir did with Damon D. of BetUS Radio

The legitimate question came up concerning whether Mir, having already been in the Octagon with Lesnar once, might want to put on some pounds against a man who was naturally bigger. Mir mentioned that his weight is around 246 pounds, when is well under the limit he imposed for himself, and that he’s not going to “play the game” of trying to be bigger and bulkier than his foe. “No matter what I’ve done over the last six months, it would silly for me to come in and think I could bench more than he can.”

Mir said that he wasn’t necessarily restricting his diet, but that when one trains every day on a schedule of five rounds of sparring and five rounds of wrestling. That has a tendency to take some calories off, making him leaner and leaner.

The sport of mixed martial arts has evolved to the point where a competitor cannot rely on just one skill to get him through fight after fight. Many disciplines are involved, and top-level fighters have to be versed in many of them. If there is a predominant edge for Mir in this fight, it’s that he is more well-rounded. Toward that end, there are a lot of people participating in his training camp.

“This is kind of like a mini-football camp,” he told Damon. “I have all these different specialists who help me out in every different area of the game, and each guy has something that he brings to the table for me.”

Mir admits it is not the easiest thing to prepare for Lesnar, who could outweigh him by over 30 pounds, although while conceding that his opponent is strong, he is not superhuman. “Sometimes people let their imagination get carried away with them,” he says.

Mir also indicated that because Lesnar is not the most experienced competitor (only four fights) he is concentrating on some things that Brock has not seen, with the objective of putting him in awkward positions. “It’s the mainstay of MMA,” he says.

He also pointed out that there are disciplines Lesnar is not all that familiar with. “I don’t care how much he’s trained in the past couple of months, he still hasn’t had as many competitions as I’ve had in MMA, and I’ve had fifty-plus competitions in submission wrestling itself. He hasn’t had any.”

You could tell from the interview that Mir is also placing an emphasis on striking. “Every time I watch a video on him, or see any highlights, all he (Lesnar) does is hit the pads,” he says. “That’s good, but there’s no substitute for putting on the headgear on and having a guy hit you.” That area of the game is where Mir thinks he is going to extract his greatest advantage.

Mir said he has been working on his boxing (striking), and that is something that, living in Las Vegas, he has ample opportunity to do because of the number of gyms and the plethora of fighters who come in and out of the city. There is no doubt he is mindful of Lesnar’s ability with the right hand, as he showed in his knockout of Randy Couture, but Mir has also looked impressive with his hands, showing that attribute in his title fight against Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira.

Mir also offered his opinion on the other championship scheduled for July 11 – the welterweight encounter between Georges St. Pierre and Thiago Alves. “If all goes according to game plan, I would have to lean toward St. Pierre.” However, he said he wouldn’t bet on the fight, recognizing that Alves’ strength and power will always keep him in the running, no matter how things are going.

This was not mentioned in the interview, but Mir also reportedly has an involvement with a revolutionary dietary supplement called Max GXL that offers higher energy by, among other things, increasing the glutathione that is in the system. In fact, John Nelson, former president of the American Medical Association, says it “represents the single most important breakthrough in health that I will witness in my life time.”

So I guess that’s another thing he’ll have going for him on Saturday night.

By Charles Jay