(Photo by Tracy Lee for Yahoo! Sports)
Last weekend at the Rogers Centre, former UFC light heavyweight champion Lyoto Machida sent 55,000 fans jumping to their feet with one kick, knocking out mma legend Randy Couture in the second round of their UFC 129 bout in Toronto.
Standing in Lyoto’s corner was famous martial artist, and actor, Steven Seagal which immediately left many wondering if he had taught “The Dragon” that fight ending kick like he had for Anderson Silva’s fight ending kick on Vitor Belfort at UFC 126.
After some early interviews, where Seagal talked about helping Machida with the kick, “The Dragon” has spoken to Tatame.com.br, saying that he’d been practicing the kick for some time at the direction of his father, Yoshizo Machida a Shotokan Karate master.
“There is this kick in Karate, ‘Kanku Dai’. When I started preparing, soon after hernia surgery, my preparation was a bit limited, so my dad (Yoshizo) gave me some kicks to train and told me to use it in sparring at times, but always very carefully because this is a shot that hurts, it’s like a poke,” the former champion explained.
“When I came to Canada I met with Steven Seagal and he said ‘Machida, this kick will work.’ But I was not worried about doing it or not, only if a chance came up. I was relaxed… and dropped the kick into place. There was nothing ‘out of nothing.’”
The original interview is in Portuguese, FightersOnlyMagazine.co.uk is credited with the English translation of this particular passage of the interview.