It’s been nearly nine years since Randy Couture fought outside of the U.S.: perhaps the plane ride boredom forced him to make the very prizefighter error of thinking too far ahead.

“I would love a crack at [Lyoto] Machida,” he told Sherdog’s Greg Savage. “His style is very interesting, and nobody has seemed to have gotten a handle on him yet. Skillset-wise, it would be a great match-up.”

Couture approaches prizefighting like one of those giant, microscopically-fractured puzzles. He delights in figuring people out, and in that realm, there are few fighters more difficult than Machida, who represents the polar-bear-in-snow image in that analogy. But meeting Machida is conditional on beating Brandon Vera in Manchester Saturday, an order that might be hard to fill for a 46-year-old: Vera is the best Thai boxer Couture has faced in years, has better-than-average wrestling for the division, and probably won’t be as physically dysfunctional after a weight cut as Couture.

All of this may not matter if Vera’s will can be broken against the fence, but it was Couture who walked away after stumbling at the hand speed of Chuck Liddell in 2006. Vera is not Liddell, but at this stage of Couture’s career, he may not have to be. Fighting Machida will probably remain a hypothetical.