Randy Couture talks about saving 'dying squirrel' gym owners on 'Gym Rescue'

When producers pitched Randy Couture on “Gym Rescue,” a spinoff of Spike TV’s popular reality show “Bar Rescue” that debuts tonight (10 p.m. ET/PT), the idea of rehabbing gyms wasn’t unfamiliar to the ex-champ and UFC Hall of Famer. He’d helped put Oregon’s Team Quest on the map and built Xtreme Couture from the ground up.

“It’s a constant ebb and flow in the gym of people you have working for you and, in a lot of ways, are representing you,” he told MMAjunkie Radio. “Trying to make that as much of a family and invest everybody in the interest and brand of that gym is a very hard thing to do.”

Taking on that challenge for others was one thing, but there was something he was certain he couldn’t do if he joined the show.

“I was like, ‘Man, I can’t act like Jon Taffer,'” said Couture, referencing “Bar Rescue’s” aggressive host. “That’s just not in my DNA.”

The guy for that job, Couture thought, was Frank Shamrock. He would substitute nicely for the high-pitched theatrics of Taffer’s presence, Couture thought. There would be no drama lacking when the ex-UFC champ and MMA commentator locked horns with struggling gym owners.

Then Couture walked in the front door and met the talent.

“I originally went in with the good-cop/bad-cop mentality, and it quickly changed,” he said. “They cast very well. The gyms were a hot mess, and there was no way not to get fired up with some of these folks.”

As expected, Shamrock did a lot of heavy lifting when it came to motivating clueless owners in the show’s three-episode test run. One of them actually fought back and shoved “The Legend.” Later, he accused the show of destroying his gym.

Couture, though, was right in the thick of things.

The idea of the “Rescue” series, like so many makeover shows, is about changing bad attitudes and making a fresh start. Couture is no stranger to those after a couple decades in the MMA business as a fighter and business owner, so it was pretty easy for him to see the obstacles.

It was in the way the owners dressed, the way managers acted on the floor, and the marketing (or lack thereof) in the neighborhood it occupied.

“People get an idea of what they build and what they want to do and they’re doing the dying squirrel, basically, hanging on with one paw in that tree, onto that idea that they originally had,” he said.

One early indication from the show’s first run is that not all gyms are salvageable. Couture nonetheless hopes viewers will get involved in the process. Whether it works or not, he said, it’s good TV.

“What I’ve seen of the three episodes, I think they’re really good,” he said. “I think people are going to dig it.”

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