This is disappointing news to me. Randy “The Natural” Couture has resigned from the UFC via a fax from South Africa. For anyone who is now asking who the heck that is… he’s the current (well, was I guess, he’s not anymore) heavyweight champion in the Mixed Martial Arts league called UFC. UFC is the ‘new’ boxing. It sweeping the nation, no change that, it’s swiffer-ing the nation and becoming one of the fastest growing sports in North America. Randy Couture was one of the guys I really loved watching in this league, he’s a very classy guy, he’s one of those guys that is never supposed to win and always does, and he’s got outstanding character to boot. He gave reason for his resignation:
“I’m tired of being taken advantage of, played as the nice guy and basically swimming against the current with the management of the UFC,” he said. “I have a lot of other things going on in my life that I’m doing just fine with. I don’t need the problems. I don’t feel like I get the respect I deserve from the organization, and that’s motivation No. 2 for the letter of resignation that was sent today.”
The other problem with his resignation is that he’s also resigned as commentator, which means we are now stuck listening to Joe Rogan as color commentator. I could write up a whole ‘nother blog about all the things wrong with him (John Madden is notorious for being one of the most annoying color commentators in the sports industry, if you ask me, compared to Rogan, the garbage that comes out of his mouth is nothing but beautiful poetry).
What it boils down to is this. The UFC lost one of their greatest ambassadors for their sport, and it appears from reports that it’s largely due to it’s president Dana White. While I’m sure we will eventually hear more on what happened, in the meantime, “The Natural” will be greatly missed.