Fight Forum - MMA - UFC - Boxing - K1 - EliteXC - View Single Post - Why Randy Couture will lose to Gabriel Gonzaga

Drexal · 08-13-2007, 05:06 AM

Quote:

Why Randy Couture will lose to Gabriel Gonzaga
4:51 PM 8/12/2007

UFC 74 is quickly approaching, and many people, including myself are looking forward to seeing Randy Couture (15-8) face off against Gabriel Gonzaga (8-1) for the heavyweight title.

I have a funny hunch that Randy will not be walking away with the belt at the end of the night. Now before you go ballistic on me, let me explain my reasoning for this prediction.

Randy couture has always had problems with larger fighters, especially wrestlers/ jujitsu practitioners. Now Gabriel is one big man at 6’2” and 242 lbs and his bread + butter is his jujitsu game winning 5 out of his 8 fights by submission, including an impressive arm-bar win over previously undefeated Brazilian jujitsu blackbelt Carmelo Marrero.

Randy couture on the other hand, has lost most of his fights to bigger and stronger fighters like Josh Barnett, Ricco Rodriguez and Enson Inoue.

Randy is very talented fighter with lots of big wins to his name, but primarily from smaller guys and most of them by decision. I don’t believe that Randy can win a decision with Gonzaga, Gonzaga is too big too strong for Couture and coming off that impressive win over Mirko “CroCop” Filipovic – his confidence must be through the roof.

In my mind, there absolutely no way that Randy is going to be able to hold Gonzaga down and pound his way to a decision victory like he did with Tim Sylvia. The only way couture is going to take this one is by KO or submission, but even that is far fetched.

Couture even admits that CroCop would be a better match for him style-wise than Gonzaga.

Quote from the Canadian Press:

“I traditionally do better against guys who are strikers, guys like Chuck (Liddell) and Tim (Sylvia) whose weaknesses tend to be more on the ground. That’s an area where I’m strongest, so I can usually comfortably put a guy there. Mirko’s also one of this guys. I was confident if I came after him I could put him on the ground. You take a guy like Gonzaga down and you’re still not out of the woods. He’s an expert in submission. He’s a very, very skilled grappler so you’ve got to be sharp all around.” -Randy Couture

With that said, anything can happen in a fight, and no matter what happens on august 25th, this is going to be an all out war, and if I were a better – my money would be on the big hairy beast from Brazil.

source: http://www.mmalinker.com/Couture_Gonzaga.php

I'm not sure who wrote this article as it doesn't have a name attributed to it, but I think he's pretty much on the money on this one. I'd love more than anything if Randy would win this one but I think he may have a lot of trouble with Gonzaga.

I think I'll be betting Gonzaga but routing for Randy!