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Randy Couture Week is an intense look at an MMA legend on the brink of a big fight at this weekend's UFC 91 in Las Vegas.

Randy was facing an uncertain future. He had lost his last two fights and both opponents had seemingly exposed a glaring weakness in his game. Randy did great against equally-sized opponents or larger ones without proficient ground games, but his style was not adequate against the big men who could go to the floor. Since there were not as many ground-ignorant heavyweights as there used to be, it was time for Randy to pick on people his own size.

A cut to 205 pounds was not as drastic as it seems. Randy generally weighed in around 225 pounds when fighting at heavyweight. But big light-heavyweights like Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell walked around at about 220 and managed to make weight at 205 every time. And as a wrestler, Randy had plenty of experience with weight-cutting; he just hadn't had to in a while. Feeling that he still had plenty of good fights left in his 40-year-old body, Randy set out to become the first fighter to ever win a belt in two weight classes.

Randy Couture Week is an intense look at an MMA legend on the brink of a big fight at this weekend's UFC 91 in Las Vegas.

Having vanquished Maurice Smith to capture the UFC heavyweight title, it seemed Randy had nowhere to go but down. Randy found another place he could go: Japan. It was the first time, but not the last, that Randy would get into a contract dispute with the UFC, which was owned by Semaphore Entertainment Group at the time. When Randy and SEG could not come to terms on a contract, the UFC stripped him of his title. It would be three years before he stepped foot in the Octagon again.

Randy Couture Week is an intense look at an MMA legend on the brink of a big fight.

If you've ever wondered why Randy Couture is called "The Natural," it has something to do with the way he burst onto the MMA scene back in 1997.

Looking back, Couture won his first four UFC bouts -- the first MMA fights in his career -- in such convincing fashion that it seems he was predestined to be a UFC champion.

But back in 1997, Randy as a champion was an unusual development, and it had nothing to do with his lack of experience in mixed martial arts.

Randy Couture Week is an intense look at an MMA legend on the brink of a big fight.

MMA is a "what have you done for me lately" kind of sport and, unfortunately, Randy Couture hasn't done anything in a while. It's been more than a year since his last fight, and a lot has happened in the interim. But leave it to Randy to come back in a big way.

In his bout Saturday night, he faces the biggest of the big in the mammoth Brock Lesnar, former superstar of the WWE. Win or lose, it's another example of how Randy has made a career of taking only the biggest and hardest fights.

For those who didn't catch our week-long dedication to Fedor Emelianenko, this series of articles should serve as a primer for the fight from one fighter's point-of-view and on Couture's career as well as answer why, at the ripe old age of 45, he is still considered among the best fighters on the planet.

But this is no biography. We'll leave the retelling of Randy's personal life and embroilment in fight politics to others. We'll concentrate only on the time Randy has spent in the Octagon. And, for the first time, FightMetric statistics from every fight in his career will shed light on the areas of Randy's game that have been most impressive, providing historical context and benchmarks against his fighting peers.

Come back every day this week for the next installments in the series:

Tuesday: 1997-2000: The Birth of "The Natural"
Wednesday: 2000-2002: Titles Won, Titles Lost
Thursday: 2003-2004: Reborn at 205
Friday: 2005-Present: Comings and Goings