Bleacher Report's Scott Harris:
With each passing hour, it seems more and more likely that UFC 129 will be Randy Couture's swan song in the UFC. In case you missed it, Couture has indicated that win or lose, his April 30 fight with Lyoto Machida will probably be his last.
Only time will tell how this plays out (after all, he's made such proclamations before). In the meantime, though, the announcement has served to overshadow and perhaps intensify the challenging situation in which his opponent finds himself.
Machida stands to lose a lot more here than just a fight, or his high-rent space in the penthouse of the light heavyweight division. This is a career-defining moment for "The Dragon."
It will help him and everyone else determine not whether he has the talent to be great (because that's been settled), but whether he has the wherewithal to pick himself up off the mat.
It feels like a lot more than two years have passed since Machida was the fighter to beat at 205, and maybe the entire sport. Out of respect for the reams of parchment and scads of electrons who have already given their lives in the effort, I won't rehash the usual bouquets about his karate background and his elusiveness and so on. If you're interested, you can Google it.
And in any event, it's next Saturday that I'm focused on. And for Machida's sake, I hope he's focused on it, too. Because it's the biggest fight of his career. I know he's had some big ones, but this one looms largest, and it's not particularly close.
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