UFC 129: Lyoto Machida Is Prepared to Give "The Best Lyoto Machida" at UFC 129

Not too often does a fighter get the chance to compete against a legend like Randy Couture.

Lyoto Machida, who will face Couture at UFC 129, is one of the those few.

"When I started out in my career, I started watching Randy Couture fight, and I always had this dream of fighting Randy Couture," Machida told Ariel Helwani of MMAFighting.com through his translator Ed Soares.

"But as my career started going," Machida continued. "And the older Randy started getting, it started getting farther away." 

And Machida's career got off to great start, remaining undefeated in his first 16 fights. Along the way, Machida earned victories over such fighters as, Rich Franklin, BJ Penn, Stephan Bonnar, Thierry Rameau Sokoudjou and Thiago Silva. Machida also captured the UFC light heavyweight championship with a victory over Rashad Evans at UFC 98 in 2009. 

However, the Brazilian's undefeated streak was snapped at the hands of Mauricio "Shogun" Rua and he picked up another loss to Quinton "Rampage" Jackson. His fight against Jackson was his second consecutive loss.

Machida said he believes he beat Jackson. 

"I believe I won that fight, but that's one of the biggest things I am changing, in my vision, is that I don't want to leave it in the judge's hands anymore," Machida said through Soares.

While he has learned his lesson through his past defeats, Machida said he understands the importance of being more aggressive when the opportunity presents itself in a fight. But he said he feels no pressure to finish because there is pressure in every fight, regardless. 

"The pressure always exists", Machida said. "Whether you're the champion defending the title, whether you're the challenger fighting for the title, whether it's you're UFC debut, there's always types of pressure." 

And it is that same pressure that has motivated "The Dragon" to put on the best performance of his career against Couture this weekend.

"Out of respect for Randy, this is what I felt, this is the pressure I put on myself," he said. "Win or lose, I am going to go in there and give him the best Lyoto (Machida)."