Randy and Rich head to Iraq
Former Ultimate Fighting Championship star Randy Couture and current UFC champ Rich Franklin, leave today for Iraq to visit troops as part of a 10-day United Service Organizations tour. “It’s my third USO deal,� says Couture, who spent six years in the Army. “We always get a huge response from the military. It’s inspiring.�
Couture has been staying busy since Chuck Liddell’s fist sent him into retirement last spring.
He’s been training with UFC fighters, such as Forrest Griffin, and also has opened a training center in Los Angeles and plans another in Las Vegas. He’s finished taping “Ultimate Fighter 4� as a coach along with Georges St Pierre.
He’s also got a part in “Invincible,� a movie now in theatres about Vince Papale, the bartender who made the 1976 Philadelphia Eagles, and he’s been working on another part in “Big Stand,� a prison comedy with Rob Schneider. He plays an Aryan supremacist prisoner with “Beat Down� tattooed on his knuckles.
He’s working with the UFC’s Mark Ratner to get mixed martial arts sanctioned in all 50 states. He’s got his own nutritional supplement line out.
Couture, who weighs about 230 pounds – “back up to heavyweight,� he says – doesn’t plan to return to the octagon, unless the UFC and rival Pride could put together one bout. “I’d come out of retirement to face Wanderlei Silva,� he says.
