It’s been a minute since the man known as “The Natural” executed one of his trademark arm bars to choke out an opponent inside the UFC Octagon. More than a decade-and-a-half have passed since he submitted James Toney in the first round of their ballyhooed 2010 heavyweight bout.
Yet, at 62 years old, Randy Couture might just be having his biggest impact yet—in the wellness industry, and particularly for military vets like himself. As so often is the case, it all started with a cannabis gummy.
“This whole journey began with trying to solve sleep problems,” Couture says, warming to the idea of talking about his life to me. “I used to wake up at three in the morning, and about five years ago, I found CBN gummies.”
Fast forward to 2026, and Couture’s the lead pitchman for an entirely different type of cannabis product. He recently partnered with startup Active Brand THCv to market the trendy cannabinoid tetrahydrocannabivarin, which, similar to CBD, isn’t marketed as psychoactive. Couture says he went his entire fighting career without using any cannabis, but now uses some form of the plant, including THCv, on a daily basis.
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Interestingly, he’s also branched out to other plant-based medicines. Since hanging up his fighting gloves as a pro, The UFC Hall-of-Famer says, in recent years, he’s enjoyed a number of ayahuasca retreats and experiences with psilocybin, among other powerful natural remedies. To fully appreciate just how improbable it is for The Natural—a polished Army vet raised by a strict single mother—to be spearheading the alternative-medicine scene, you have to understand just how he got here.
Couture earned his nickname from his natural ability to excel at just about anything he did—sometimes with hardly any training. While most professional athletes peak in their 20s, Couture made his MMA debut a month shy of his 34th birthday. That day, in May 1997, he needed less than a minute to submit opponent Tony Halme at UFC 13.
Before that, he starred as a high school wrestler in his hometown of Lynnwood, WA, earning an individual state championship during his senior year. Upon graduating, he enlisted into the US Army and was part of its 101st Airborne division.
Like plenty of young people, Couture experimented with weed in his late teens. Lynnwood High didn’t drug test athletes, so toking a joint here and there was never a problem. But that stopped when Couture put on the camouflage for Uncle Sam.
“I always admired the heroism of serving in the armed forces, and I wanted to be a part of it,” he says candidly. “I wasn’t into recreationally getting stoned or anything like that, but I didn’t have a choice once I joined the Army.”
Couture wanted to keep wrestling, so he applied to try out with the Army’s Freestyle wrestling team. To his surprise, he was assigned to tryouts for the branch’s Greco-Roman team instead. A clerical error meant Couture had to choose between waiting a year to reapply for the style of wrestling he’d known his entire life or auditioning immediately for a style he’d never known.
Instead of waiting, The Natural jumped right into Greco-Roman—a variation of Freestyle without the leg takedowns—and quickly rose to the top. Couture spent six years in the Army and won several international titles from 1982-88 before being honorably discharged and heading to college at the age of 25.
“It was a very formative time in my life,” he says. “Being a Cold War veteran, I never had to put my butt on the line unlike so many of these men and women, since 9/11, have actually had to fight in a combat zone. They trained me as an air traffic controller, but I really spent most of my enlistment wrestling for the Army.”
So dominant was Couture on the mat, he earned spots as an alternate for Team USA’s wrestling team at the 1988, 1992 and 1996 Olympics. In the meantime, he was a three-time NCAA All American at Oklahoma State University while pursuing a degree in literature. He continued to wrestle after graduating, heading back home to the Pacific Northwest to coach at Oregon State University.
Couture loved coaching but knew his ceiling was higher as a competitor. At 31, he left the Oregon State gig and began training full-time. In May 1997, he debuted in the UFC at age 33, winning a four-man tournament to become the Heavyweight division champion.
Like at so many of his previous stops, Couture was put on the back burner before getting the chance to prove himself with the UFC. He said promoters initially wanted fighters with more diverse martial arts backgrounds, and placed Couture on the alternate list. Sound familiar?
But just three weeks ahead of that glorious afternoon in the spring of 1997, he got the call.
“It was like 100 percent adrenaline and 100 percent fear at the same time,” he says of his first fight. “I didn’t know if the day would ever come, but once I got the chance, I was going to make the most of it.”
Later that year, after Couture won his third consecutive UFC title in as many tries, “The Natural” nickname was born. Dominant from the beginning, Couture enjoyed a legendary 14-year UFC career in the Octagon that earned him just the fourth-ever spot in the sport’s hall of fame. As part of that journey, he opened his own MMA training center in Las Vegas, launched one of the UFC’s most popular clothing brands and forayed into acting with gigs in The King Of Queens, Hawaii Five-0 and The Expendables, among several other television shows and films.
Still, something was missing. Couture, a self-described “fitness freak,” spent decades with what felt like endless pain. He went countless nights without sleep and had trouble staying present, despite plenty of exercise and an immaculate diet. He wondered: If fitness and diet were the key to a healthy life, why was he struggling so much?
That question marked the beginning of a new chapter.
With his military and professional fighting career in the rearview mirror, Couture returned to cannabis during the pandemic for the first time since his teens. When CBN worked for his sleep, he ventured into psilocybin. Then came the ayahuasca retreats. Then the venom from the Sonoran Desert Toad.
It all worked. All. Of. It.
He’s sleeping eight to ten hours a night and can now enjoy days “without falling down the rabbit hole.” He handed over his 24,000 square-foot Las Vegas training gym to his son Ryan, also a former MMA pro, and spends his free time visiting his daughter Aimee in Oregon. Couture has three grandchildren between Ryan and Aimee and says his improved health has allowed him to appreciate every moment with them even more.
So, when Active Brands pitched him on their THCv products earlier this year, Couture says it was a no-brainer.
“Even compared to everyday cannabis products, this is unique because it’s more energizing than sedating,” he says. “We have these preconceived ideas that stoners are getting the munchies all the time, and you know, aren’t doing anything on a daily basis…Active’s THCv is the opposite of all of that, which was really intriguing to me.”
These days, when Couture’s not with his family, he’s either riding his Harley Davidson Road Glide or knee-deep in his work giving back to fellow veterans. His Xtreme Couture GI Foundation hosts more than a half-dozen events a year around the country, mostly motorcycle “Ride For Our Troops” events in which Couture spends the day biking and chopping it up with combat vets in different cities nationwide. His family’s Las Vegas mega-gym also welcomes at least 50 veterans every Friday for free training and fellowship.
The plant medicine has helped make it all possible. His own health—perhaps as good as it’s ever been—has made his wellness journey reach much further than the self.
“We’re trying to help these heroes get through their PTSD and their traumatic brain injuries,” Couture says. “These plant-based modalities can help stroke patients reclaim some of their function, and they can help delay or prevent Alzheimer’s. They’re very profound. You feel like you’re shedding a bunch of programming, shedding a bunch of old habits or bad habits that don’t serve you anymore,” he adds of his experience with cannabis and psychedelics. “The veil of reality comes down, and you kind of see through. Who knew The Matrix was a documentary instead of a feature film?”
Although scientific research increasingly supports the benefits of both cannabis and some psychedelics to treat PTSD, Couture says he’s careful about who he brings up plant-based medicine around. He jokes that some people discount the advice as crazy talk from someone “who got punched in the head too much.”
But, he says, he hopes people understand there’s plenty of entry-level ways to get medicated without jumping straight to toad venom.
“I’ll always be an advocate for cannabis, THC, CBN, CBG and CBD and just using it in appropriate ways with the right terpenes.”
And just like that, The Natural finds himself at the top of a totally different game. This guy’s a natural for sure.
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