Couture Vs Lesnar: The Break Down-Keys To Couture's Success and Failure

Brock Lesnar is a monster. He is big, tall, muscular and simply frightening to look at.

In his next fight, he is set to fight Randy Couture, who is muscular but very small for a heavyweight. Randy Couture should win this one; he really should, because he has expeirence and skill on his side.

But what sort of things could figure into Brock Lesnar pulling out the win?

Well for one, Brock Lesnar is big—plain and simple. Randy Couture in his younger years at the UFC dropped out of the HW division because the guys he was fighting were getting bigger and bigger, and were all skilled.

Randy's losses in his early career came to big guys like Ricco Rodriguez and Josh Barnett, both of whom are respectable in their own right. But the thing is, Brock Lesnar is nearly twice the size of those guys—he is enormous and although not well-rounded, has a good wrestling pedigree.

Randy Couture has a good wrestling background—he was an Olympic alternate in Greco-Roman wrestling, whereas Brock Lesnar was a primarily a college freestyle wrestler.

However, as different the styles are, Lesnar would never have been in the same weight class as Couture. So size may be an issue here, especially when it is wrestler vs. wrestler.

Can Couture take Lesnar down? It is almost a guarantee that Lesnar cannot exactly take Couture down or really wants to, but he can almost most certainly score a knock down. One punch from Lesnar seems to be an instant knock down (not a KO).

Another thing Lesnar has going for him is that he is still an unknown. Having only fought three fights total (first fight was in ProElite) Lesnar does not have a lot of footage on him and each fight he fights can mean a different Lesnar each time. Until Lesnar has about two more fights nobody knows what he is going to be like.

The one gurantee people have about Lesnar is that he is going to be strong and big. Assumptions can be made though about what he will do based on previous fights: he will probably want to wrestle; striking is slow but hard, may want to lay and pray, may have vicious ground and pound and will probably gas.

Lesnar is a good athlete with an extremely gifted physique, but Couture is also a good athlete. Couture has proven mental toughness in the past and is good at coming up with a game plan.

Couture's keys to succeed are: to dirty box Lesnar using good side to side movement, grind him out and wear him down, press the action, don't be intimidated or back off, and use jiu-jitsu—not wrestling. The jiu-jitsu part is going to be key because Lesnar can potentially not defend submissions and it will be up to Couture to use whatever submission training he has to his advantage.

Couture needs to review footage, look at Lesnar's three previous fights, and look at fights that other fighters fought against much bigger opponents. One fight to constantly review is interm HW champion Antonio Rodrigo Noguiera vs. Bob Sapp.