In combat sports, Joe Rogan is best known for calling UFC fights but had his career taken a slightly different trajectory, he could have been one of the first athletes to compete for the promotion.
Long before he was a UFC color commentator, Rogan was passionate about martial arts, which started with training in taekwondo when he was still a teenager. The now 58-year-old comedian and podcast host was actually quite accomplished as a martial artist but a series of events led him to leave fighting behind and focus on a new career instead.
The biggest factor in Rogan’s decision to stop fighting really came down to his long term health, especially after he started witnessing the debilitating effects of brain damage.
“I stopped fighting when I was 22,” Rogan said on his podcast. “I started doing comedy at 21 and I kind of half-assed still trained and fought a few times while I was also doing comedy but I didn’t have the commitment that I had before. I’d had a series of events that led me out of wanting to compete. One of them was recognizing brain damage. Recognizing it in other people. Recognizing it in friends and then laying in bed with headaches after sparring sessions going ‘where does this lead?’ and I’m not even making any money off of this.
“I started doing boxing and kickboxing and I saw so much brain damage. I saw so much unreported brain damage. Just weird stuff. Guys would tell you the same story they just told you five minutes ago. They just tell it to you again. I realized oh these guys can’t remember that they just said this thing five minutes ago. It was like they were stoned and they weren’t. They were just starting to exhibit the beginning signs of brain damage.”
Rogan also revealed a disturbing incident that happened in one of his own fights that served as a wakeup call that perhaps this wasn’t something he should be doing for years to come.
“There was a guy that I hurt really bad in a tournament,” Rogan explained. “I knocked this one guy out when I was 19 in California, I was competing in the nationals. I [knocked out] this guy and he never got up.
“They had to take him on a stretcher and he was on a stretcher for half an hour and they took him to the hospital and it freaked me out. Because I was like that could have easily been me. It easily could have been me. That one bothered me because it’s like what am I doing? Like why am I doing this?”
Scoring that knockout and then the devastating aftermath had Rogan questioning if this was something he wanted to continue to pursue knowing it was only a matter of time before it happened to him.
“I had gotten really lucky where I never got hurt in a tournament,” Rogan said. “Never got dropped. Never got knocked out. Never got really rocked. But I did it to a lot of people. Then I was like this is coming around. It’s only a matter of time before I get whomped. It happens. It’s going to happen.
“I’m going to fight some national champion guy, I’m going to zig when I should have zagged and I’m going to catch a heel to my f*cking jaw and that’s going to be a wrap. I’m going to be waking up in the hospital.”
Add to that, Rogan admits that at the time he just didn’t see where fighting was going to take him for the future. In those days, the UFC didn’t exist so there wasn’t even a possibility of crossing over to an event where he could potentially make some real money from fighting.
Rogan felt like he came to a crossroads where he could either continue fighting or find something else to do, which is around the same time he did his first open mic night doing standup comedy.
“I’m trying to win the national championship. I’m trying to be in the Olympics. I’m trying to do these things but I’m like where does that lead me?” Rogan said. “Teaching? I was already teaching at the time but do I really want to teach for a living forever? I don’t think I do. Then recognizing the martial art that I had picked, taekwondo, had a lot of flaws in it. It was really good for kicking but it wasn’t the best overall martial art.
“When I started kickboxing, I really realized that. Then I started getting into Muay Thai and I realized the power of leg kicks and the devastating impact it has on your mobility. One or two leg kicks and you’re so compromised. There’s so many levels to this. I was also kind of half-assing martial arts the last year. Not nearly as committed. I was all in all throughout my high school years. All in until I was 21 and then from 21 to 22 I kind of half-assed it and I didn’t start doing jiu-jitsu until years later.”
He also suffered an injury that just added another coin to the bank that perhaps fighting was never going to cash in for him.
Rogan fully committed himself to standup comedy, which led to acting gigs and eventually hosting the ultra-popular series Fear Factor before creating the biggest podcast on the planet. All in all, it worked out pretty well for him.
“I tore my ACL and when I tore my ACL, I had to have surgery and I couldn’t do anything for like six months,” Rogan said. “Then I realized my body’s vulnerable. You’re counting on your tissue staying in tact in order to live this life that you want to live. So I had to get my knee reconstructed. I was 22 I think when I blew it out. 21, somewhere around there. It was right around when I was thinking about stopping competing. The universe was like let me help you, let me f*ck your knee up real quick.
“I had to get that fixed and that takes a while before it gets back to normal again. But comedy became a thing where it was like this is very exciting. Really difficult to do and so different from what I was doing.”
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