GOAT is of course the acronym for Greatest Of All Time and not a literal reference to a horny creature which produces milk. Like Jordan. Randy Couture’s career officially ended this week when he faxed a resignation notice to UFC president Dana White and let it be known he would not be appearing for UFC in any capacity in the future. The reasons for Randy’s decision to quit are being debated in message boards and on radio programmes all over the internet but one thing is clear – Randy is still under UFC contract and won’t be fighting for anyone else for several years. At 44 he doesn’t have several years left. After a career which won him five UFC titles and saw him written off twice, does he deserve the title Greatest of All Time?

His career fits quite neatly into three phases. The first is his beginnings in the sport – ten years ago this past March – when he made his debut beating Tony Halme. Halme had a brief run in the WWF in 1994 as an evil foreign bad guy. Because the US didn’t really have any enemies at that point (at least ones the public had heard of) Halme was an evil heel from Finland. Yes, that Finland. He won his first four fights in UFC and captured the heavyweight title before a contract dispute meant he quit the company. He went over to Japan with mixed success in a few tournaments before returning the US – and winning back the UFC heavyweight title – in 2000. After one more trip to Japan in 2001 he became exclusively a UFC fighter.

He lost the heavyweight title to Josh Barnett in 2002 – Barnett would later fail a drugs test and be stripped of the title – and Couture’s career appeared over after a second loss a row, this time to Ricco Rodriguez. I still remember the commentator’s call as we saw the beaten Randy leaving the cage. "Is this the last time we will ever see Randy Couture in the Octagon?" It certainly seemed like it. He was 39 years old and had just been battered into submission by someone ten years younger and forty pounds heavier. Couture – a natural 225lbs – was too old and too small to compete with the new generation of heavyweights.

When UFC light heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz kept making excuses not to fight number one contender Chuck Liddell it seemed clear that something had to give. Dana White decided he’d had enough of Tito, his injuries and his "entertainment commitments". He was going to crown Liddell as the interim light heavyweight champion, a title which would quietly become the real light heavyweight title if Tito kept refusing to fight. The question was who should Liddell fight to get the interim title? It had to be someone credible but not too dangerous. They decided to ask Randy Couture to drop down a weight class and fight Chuck. Randy lacked the knockout power to spoil their big day and, days short of his 40^th birthday, wouldn’t have what it took to be anything other than another highlight reel KO for Liddell.

But what no one took into account was that Randy was able to fight at 205lbs because he’d totally changed his life since losing his last fight. His training regime had changed, his diet had changed and he had become a new man. Always an intelligent fighter, Randy had overhauled his body to such a degree that it took ten years off him. He stunned the world by not only beating Chuck Liddell but by the way he beat him. He dominated the stand up fight, out-punching the kick boxer, on his way to a TKO win and the interim light heavyweight title. He followed this amazing win with an equally amazing win against Tito Ortiz to unify the belts. Randy was now the undisputed 205lbs champion of the UFC and phase two of his career was well and truly under way.

UFC46 will go down as One Of Those Nights. The eagerly anticipated fight between Randy Couture and Brazilian sensation Vitor Belfort was fifteen seconds old when Vitor threw a punch which narrowly missed Randy’s head. At least, it almost missed Randy’s head. Vitor’s glove grazed Randy’s eyeball and cut it open. The doctor took a look at the injury and immediately stopped the fight. While that was undoubtedly the right decision, UFC’s call to give the belt to Vitor was not. Maybe they panicked because the crowd was pissed off. Maybe it is just that American thing where there HAS to be a winner and there HAS to be a loser. The fight was an obvious no contest but they didn’t see it like that and Randy was once more an ex-champion. He won a rematch a few months later and faced another rematch – this time with Chuck Liddell.

Parts two and three of the Couture-Liddell trilogy didn’t go well for Randy. In the first fight he got thumbed in the eye and immediately knocked out, in the second he slipped and, in the split second’s confusion, ate a powerful shot to the face. After the second KO loss to Liddell he announced his retirement. He went out with tonnes of class, his career ending just shy of 43 years of age, having nothing left to prove.

He became a commentator for the UFC, he did a lot of media appearances promoting UFC and the sport of MMA in general, started his own training school (Xtreme Couture) and got itchy feet almost immediately.

The final phase of his career began when it was announced that he was coming out of retirement to face the world heavyweight champion, Tim Sylvia. Plenty of people questioned this decision – Sylvia wasn’t a great fighter by any means but he was very reminiscent of Rodriguez and Barnett and all those other enormous heavyweights which Randy struggled against. If Ricco Rodriguez – who failed utterly to live up to his early potential – could dominate Couture then Sylvia would surely do the same. In a five round epic, Randy dominated his much larger opponent and earned a unanimous 50-45 victory. It got the biggest pop in UFC history and felt like UFC’s defining historical moment. It was a Rocky movie but in real life. It was awesome.

His next opponent should’ve been Mirko CroCop but he was unexpectedly demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass by a dangerous Brazilian called Gabriel Gonzaga. No one gave Gonzaga much chance but his foot didn’t know that and neither did CroCop’s head. Gonzaga went into the Couture fight the favourite because if he could do that to CroCop, he could do it to Couture. He tried – he hit a perfect head kick – but Randy blocked it with his arm. It broke but he gutted out the fight. No, he did more than that, he dominated the fight. He controlled Gonzaga so utterly that he broke his spirit, then broke his nose and finally broke him completely. This was not the Randy Couture of 2001, this was not the Randy of 2003 – this was the best Randy Couture we had ever seen. With his fountain of youth, his depth of experience, his intelligence and his sheer adaptability he was looking better than he had ever looked before.

The next name on the list was Fedor. The Pride heavyweight champion, unbeaten, the most feared man on the planet. Since the death of Pride, Fedor had been the hottest free agent in the sport. Although appearing to be a softly spoken Russian who just got on with fighting and left everything else well alone, he is surrounded by enough managers to drive a very hard bargain. He was offered the biggest UFC contract in history and a debut fight against the champ but turned it down to fight with an upstart group no one really knows much about yet. Randy Couture verses Fedor Emilianenko would’ve been the dream fight to end all dream fights. And you know what? I would’ve put money on Randy because his last two fights made me believe in him like never before. Even at 44 years of age he was the man. If anyone could beat Fedor it was Randy Couture. But that fight will never happen and, not seeing anything else on the horizon, Couture decided to retire.

Of course there is more to it than not getting the fight he wanted and not wanting to risk his health in B-level fights with Tim Sylvia or Andrei Arlovski. There was a huge falling out over money and a perceived lack of respect on UFC’s part. It is an undignified end to a great career. Part of me is glad he’s not going out after suffering a devastating loss. I don’t want to see Randy getting hurt in a fight he doesn’t want to be in and is just doing for the cash. We saw what that did to Ali and it wasn’t pretty. The messy side of Couture’s departure should be forgotten as quickly as possible and we should remember the man and the fighter. His record – 16 wins and 8 losses – doesn’t do him justice. Twice he was written off as not being good enough any more and twice he rebuilt himself mentally and physically. Each time he came back better than ever.

And that’s why he’s the greatest of all time. Because in a constantly evolving sport like mixed martial arts he kept coming back and winning at the highest level. Many great MMA fighters have found that the sport has outpaced them and that they can’t compete with the newest generation of athletes. But not Randy Couture – he just kept regenerating and the sport had to keep up with him. Will there be a phase four? Probably not but in his retirement he’ll continue training fighters, he’ll continue to be the best possible advocate for mixed martial arts as it slowly overcomes the stigma of its no holds barred origins and he’ll continue to be the GOAT.