One On One With UFC Commentator Extraordinaire Joe Rogan

[Jack LaBarge]

These days in MMA, everyone has an opinion. The trick is, to find the opinions that not only carry the most weight, but the ones that consistently make sense. Joe Rogan is one of the most intelligent people I have the good fortune to know. Every time I speak with him, I'm blown away by the knowledge he routinely drops. I recently interviewed Joe, to get his take on everything from judging issues to TRT. This is the first in a three part special.

Stephie Daniels: Judging seems to be a mess across combat sports in general, with the latest travesty being the Pacquiao vs. Bradley decision. What was your take on that?

Joe Rogan: I don't know if that was corruption. I know I said it was it was corruption, but if it was, that's really blatant. I have a hard time believing that those competent judges saw that fight different than every single person I've talked to. That's not a fight like Shogun vs. Machida I. There was a lot of Machida fans that really felt like he deserved the nod in that fight. There were some that thought it was divided 60/40. There's been some fights where there's been some disagreement. I have yet to talk to a person that thought Bradley won.

I still love boxing, and I enjoy watching a good fight, but the reality is, boxing is a boring sport compared to MMA. I really enjoy watching fights where I don't have to work. I'm not saying that I don't enjoy working, because I really enjoy working, but I like watching a fight where I can just shut the f**k up, so I've been watching a lot of kickboxing lately, a lot of K-1.

I talked to Dana at one point in time, when K-1 was in trouble, and they were getting bought out. I was like, 'Man, you guys should seriously think about buying K-1.' When you look at guys like Badr Hari and Daniel Ghita and Tyrone Spong, I mean, you're dealing with unbelievably exciting fights. Almost every fight is exciting, and they're fighting three rounds, so they're going for it. It's not like a boxing match where they're pacing themselves. These guys are going after it. There's a lot of talent, especially European guys. I really enjoy It's Showtime and K-1 Max.

Star-divide

It makes boxing seem dumb. It's dumb that you can't kick someone's legs. Why are we just boxing? What the f**k is that? It's silly. It's not the best way to fight. It's not even close to the best way of fighting. If Floyd Mayweather had to fight Michael McDonald, he'd probably beat him in a boxing match. For sure he'd beat him, even if they fought with little gloves on, but in an MMA match, I'm betting on McDonald. I'm betting McDonald hits him with a leg kick, takes his back and chokes the sh*t out of him. You know why? Because it's a better style. The fighting style of MMA is a better style. The best style is when you can use anything.

When you talk about stand-up, the best style is not just straight boxing. There's too many holes in it. Boxing, as a straight style, is actually better with MMA gloves than it is with boxing gloves. Boxing as a straight style with MMA gloves becomes several degrees more dangerous, because the small size of the gloves can sneak through small openings, because your hands move faster, and there's more impact because there's less padding. I think boxing as a style with boxing gloves is not nearly as effective as it is with MMA gloves.

Stephie Daniels: What do you think of the problems with judging in MMA and boxing?

Joe Rogan: I think they should fire judges that suck. I don't understand how someone can keep their job over and over again while screwing up over and over. What do you call that exactly? Extreme incompetence. How does someone judge any sort of combat sport without at least a passing interest in the sport? If you pulled aside, and I don't want to name any names, but if you pulled aside some of those judges from the Nevada State Athletic Commission, that has notoriously had horrific scoring, and started asking them about fighters that aren't fighting in the UFC, would they know anything about them? Would they know anything about who the top judo guy is? Would they even know anything about Gilbert Melendez and how good he is?

Do these guys know how you set up an armbar? If I sat them down and said, 'Do an armbar on this guy', would they be able to do that? I think you've got to know when a guy's in trouble and when a guy's not in trouble, and the only way to know that, is to have actually trained. I don't think you can be a person who judges martial arts without being an expert in martial arts.

I have never had a mixed martial arts fight, but I'm a martial arts expert. I've been a martial arts expert since I was a little boy. I know what I'm really good at, and I know what I don't understand as well, but I have dedicated my entire life to martial arts. It's been a focus of mine since I was a growing boy, so when I commentate on MMA, I do it with the passion of someone who is 100% a fan. If I had to choose between my job with the UFC and not being a fan anymore, I would for sure just quit working.

Stephie Daniels: When you talk about the judges needing some form of MMA training or experience, would you say that also translates to the referees?

Joe Rogan: Absolutely. No doubt about it.

Stephie Daniels: What do you think of Kim Winslow, and who do you feel the best referees are?

Joe Rogan: Yeah, she should have some martial arts training. She has stood out as someone who has made a lot of mistakes, in my mind. I know that in this last event, there were several people that were upset with her.

Here's the thing about referees. They never get praised, and they always get sh*t on. There's a few guys like Josh Rosenthal and Herb Dean that have really avoided almost all criticism because they're so damned good. You never realize how good they are because they just get the job done. I've always said that Herb Dean is the best, but recently, Josh Rosenthal's reffing has been so rock solid, that he has to be considered as the best, right up there with Herb.

Of course Big John is the gold standard. He was the original great referee. John's made some mistakes, but you know what? John has been around forever. The Matt Lindland vs. Murilo Bustamante fight was a slight mistake John made. Well, I shouldn't say slight, because it could have changed the entire course of the fight. Matt Lindland tapped, and they said he didn't tap. John stopped the fight, then he restarted it, and then Lindland got him. That's gonna happen. John was setting the standards. It wasn't like he had someone to imitate. It was a completely new sport, and John was there every single step of the way.

Those are the three guys right there. If you ever had a main event, and those three guys were the refs, you could not go wrong. They're the best there is. They're awesome.
http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2012/6/14...aire-joe-rogan

[Jason 'J-Faz' Farren]

Cool read man, thanks for posting.

[Troy White]

Nice!

[Jack LaBarge]

Cool read man, thanks for posting.

No problem. Part 2 of the article should come out today.

[Jack LaBarge]

http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2012/6/15...-rogan-part-ii

This is part II of a three part series interview I did with UFC commentator, Joe Rogan. If you missed the first segment, you can find it here:

Part I

Stephie Daniels: What's your take on the rash of injuries that is currently plaguing the UFC:

Joe Rogan: You know, you'd have to be inside the camps to really know. I'm just speculating, like everybody else. There were a lot of pro MMA guys that trained at Legends, so I got to see some guys on a day to day basis, but the reality is, I'm not at Greg Jackson's camp. I'm not at any of these camps. You have to be there to see what's going on.

Stephie Daniels: I recently saw an interview with NCAA wrestling champion, Bubba Jenkins, that stated he felt that steroid use could be directly correlated with some of the injuries. Do you feel that might be a significant contributing factor?

Joe Rogan: It's certainly possible, but again, it's speculation, unless you're in the camps, but people have gotten caught for steroids, so we know steroids are really used. I think to speculate on why guys are getting injured in a sport where the main goal is to injure people is a little bit pointless.

I don't know how Randy Couture ever got through his career without getting seriously injured in a training camp, but someone should talk to him [laughs]. Someone should ask him, 'What are you doing? Are you doing yoga or stretching? Are you just training smarter than everybody else?'

Star-divide

Obviously, he's an incredibly tough guy, period. Obviously, he's an incredibly intelligent guy, as well. Whatever he did to ensure that his training camps were injury free, is something that should be studied. Randy was one of the greatest fighters of all time, and I can't recall him ever getting injured in training.

What is causing all this stuff? Probably a variety of different things. There's a lot of speculation. Mike Russell (journalist) once sent me something and asked me what I thought, but it was a statement by someone who's an insider, whose take on it was that people are training more than their bodies can manage, because so many people are on the sauce, that they have a distorted perception of what's possible, and that what these injuries are, is people who are clean, trying to keep up with people who are on the sauce.

Stephie Daniels: I know you work out and train pretty hard at 10th Planet. How do you keep yourself fairly injury free?

Joe Rogan: I don't stay injury free, not at all. I was actually off for four whole months with a serious back injury. I pulled a muscle, it's called your Levator scapulae, I think. It's where your scapula connects your muscles and tendons in the back. I pulled it a couple of times, and then it became sort of a chronic thing, where it would pop out every few months. One time, I tried to work through it, so instead of taking some time off, I trained anyway, and I really pulled it bad, to the point where I had numbness in my hand and some severe nerve pain in my elbow. The pulled muscle had the whole area inflamed, and it was impeding my nerves.

It was pretty serious sh*t, so I took a month where I didn't work out at all. I've never done that. I can't remember when I've ever done that, but for a whole month, I didn't do sh*t but get fat. I did that for probably about four weeks, and then I started to slowly get myself back into shape, and I had to do a lot of physical therapy. I had a lot of cold laser therapy and a lot of deep tissue massage and a lot of stretching. It was just a matter of getting it to heal. Now I'm training full blast again. It's 100%, but like I said, it was about four months. That's a third of a year being completely out of jiu jitsu.

I've also had both my knees reconstructed. I've had two ACL surgeries and another meniscus surgery. I've had my nose fixed, because my nose was completely smooshed inside, and it was just all useless, due to a deviated septum, and I couldn't breathe out of my nose. It's not like I'm injury free, even at my level of training, which is considerably less than it would take to even compete in an amateur MMA fight.

These guys are doing five, six days a week. Georges St. Pierre works out seven days a week. So, five, six days a week, and many hours a day. The amount of work that these fighters do is just going to break sh*t. There's no way around it. It's hard, except if you're Randy Couture [laughs].

I think a big part of what Randy is, is just really smart. Randy just knows how to train correctly. He's an intelligent guy, and he's not going to do something stupid and get himself hurt. I think he also is a very technical guy, as far as his fighting strategy, and so he's not forcing things either.

Stephie Daniels: I saw you posting in the UG on a thread related to an interview I did with Dr. Johnny Benjamin, so I've got to ask, what's your take on TRT usage in MMA?

Joe Rogan: Well, it's a tricky thing. First of all, the reason why I started talking about it in The Underground (forum), was because I was very upset with that doctor. He was talking about one possible reason why Frank Mir would need hormone replacement therapy at 33 years of age, and I thought that was very irresponsible. He's claiming that the only reason why Frank would need it, is if he abused steroids. That's not current at all, as far as research and why your body stops producing testosterone or produces it at a degraded level.

Head trauma is very much in the news and it's been talked about in many medical journals, and there are many studies on it that show a direct correlation between traumatic brain injury, or head trauma and your body's inability to produce testosterone. Anybody that knows anything about MMA, knows that Frank Mir has taken some f**king serious head trauma. Just the Shane Carwin and Brock Lesnar fights alone...think about the amount of times he got hit by Brock Lesnar in that fight. Full blast with those giant fists. Shane Carwin put him to sleep. Think about the fights that he's had that people forgot about, like Brandon Vera knocking him out or Pe de Pano beating him up. You don't even think about those fights. Not only that, he got hit by a f**king car, and launched through the air. I'm sure that's not too great for your brain either. He got hit by a car! Jesus Christ.

Why did this doctor stay that Frank Mir probably took steroids? I'll tell you why, because that's the sensational thing to say. That's the inflammatory thing to say. That's the thing that everybody wants to point at. They want to say, 'Ah, you need testosterone because you've done steroids', which it's true, that can be a cause. That can be a reason for why your body stops producing testosterone, but to say that is the cause, when there's a real clear case of absolute truth that you have that another cause of low testosterone which is prevalent throughout this guy's life...I mean, it's not like he was getting knocked out in private. He got knocked out on television in front of the whole world over and over again. That doesn't even count all the punishment he's taken in training. How many times has he been head kicked in training? How many times has he been dropped on his head in training? A f**king lot.

He's a world champion. He's training with some of the toughest f**king guys on the planet. That's gonna happen all day. You get in shape for the fight that he just had with Junior dos Santos, you're going through f**king war. For this doctor to step in and say that that's the reason, or imply that it is, that is really irresponsible. That's what I think about him.

There's a lot of doctors that want to be famous, and I don't necessarily think that it's a good thing. I think that's kind of gross. I think that you're either a doctor or you're an entertainer, and when you try to be a doctor-slash-entertainer, I just feel like you're slipping. I feel like something is going on here. I think he's trying to promote his agenda more than he's trying to spread medicine. That statement about Frank Mir, and implying that all these guys that take testosterone are taking it because they abused their bodies through steroids, that's really irresponsible, and that's not the kind of sh*t I would want to hear from my doctor.

*Make sure you look for the conclusion of this in depth interview tomorrow*

[KJ Gould]

Hi, quick request, could you not post the entire interviews in this thread please? The first few paragraphs and link is fine though. Online MMA writers get less than minimum wage for the most part, and depend on their articles brining web traffic into the site of origin.

Many thanks for the interest though, Stephie as interviewed Eddie Bravo in the past as well as a ton of other interesting MMA related personalities.

[Larry.E]

I read the post and there is a comment in there that I dont understand.."When you talk about stand-up, the best style is not just straight boxing. There's too many holes in it." Made me chuckle because the UFC heavyweight champ is a pretty much a boxer...He has knocked out the wrestler to gain the title and defend it against against a jitz guy. You dont see kicks with JDS or take downs...He use his boxing skills and it gained him the championship...

[Jason 'J-Faz' Farren]

I read the post and there is a comment in there that I dont understand.."When you talk about stand-up, the best style is not just straight boxing. There's too many holes in it." Made me chuckle because the UFC heavyweight champ is a pretty much a boxer...He has knocked out the wrestler to gain the title and defend it against against a jitz guy. You dont see kicks with JDS or take downs...He use his boxing skills and it gained him the championship...

Without ground game knowledge, and take-down defence Dos Santos would never be the champ.
Just because you aint seen him land a traingle, or power double leg doesn't mean he doesn't use the knowledge he has in those fields to keep the fight standing up.
Pacquiouao would get taken sown and ground and pounded out, Dos Santos can't be taken down... at least so far.

[Larry.E]

I see your point Jason, and it is a very good point! I just feel boxing as a "art" is over looked..

[Jack LaBarge]

The conclusion of the 3 part article


http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2012/6/16...gan-conclusion