Randy Couture Hospitalized, Intensive Care After Heart Attack

Victor Westerkamp
By Victor Westerkamp
October 24, 2019Sports News
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Randy Couture Hospitalized, Intensive Care After Heart Attack
Randy Couture attends "The Expendables 3" premiere during the 67th Annual Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2014 in Cannes, France (Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

Three times UFC champ and Hall-of-Famer Randy Couture is at the intensive-care unit after suffering a heart attack after a workout yesterday but is expected to make a full recovery.

The 56-year-old former MMA fighter and three-time UFC heavyweight champion was just done working out at Jay Glazer’s Unbreakable MMA gym in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Oct. 23, when he felt something was not right, TMZ reported.

He subsequently walked himself to the nearest hospital and was checked in and treated immediately. Doctors said he’d suffered a heart attack, but they said he’s probably going to recover fully.

andy Couture
MMA fighter Randy Couture attends Spike TV’s Guys Choice 2013 at Sony Pictures Studios on June 8, 2013 in Culver City, California (Frazer Harrison/Spike TV /Getty Images)

He’s considered by many to be one of the greatest fighters of the UFC, having skewered impressive opponents like Chuck Liddell, Tito Ortiz, Vitor Belfort, and Mark Coleman. He was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame in 2006, and was the first fighter to hold two UFC championship titles in two different divisions.

He ended his sports career on a down note with a KO loss to Lyoto Machida in 2009 at the age of 46.

After Couture retired from the octagon he went into acting, starting with smalltime cameos and gradually moving onto bigger roles, most notably in the “The Expendables” trilogy, co-starring with Jason Statham, Sylvester Stallone, and Jet Li.

He also appeared in several TV shows and competed on “Dancing with the Stars” alongside professional dancer Karina Smirnoff but the pair got ousted in the third week.

Being a professional fighter is not only bad for your opponent’s health; it can harm your own too. The heavy physical regime these athletes subject themselves to, the psychological pressure, and their jet-set lifestyle, often form a toxic cocktail that can easily take its toll.

In 2016, a similar incident took the life of another MMA star, Kimbo Slice, who the world first came to know in the mid-2000s for street fights that spread quickly across YouTube. He died on June 6, 2016, at the age of 42. He died of heart failure after a mass on his liver was also diagnosed.

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