UFC består i många ögon av Dana White, Bruce Buffer och Joe Rogan (även Mike Goldberg innan han fick sluta). Dessa tre har varit med så länge att UFC skulle kännas konstigt utan dem. Rogan firar idag (8:e februari 2019) 22 år som kommentator i UFC.
I sin egen podcast ”The Joe Rogan Experience podcast” berättar Rogan om hur han fick jobbet i den idag största MMA-organisationen i världen.
“Well, I started in 1997,”
“I was the post-fight interviewer. It just was a position that was available. The UFC was very small back then, very few people knew what it was. It was off of cable. You couldn’t get it on cable, you could only get it on satellite. And, they needed someone to do post-fight interviews.”
“I was in the martial arts world, I used to teach martial arts for a living. Before I became a comedian I used to fight. I fought in a lot of Tae Kwan Doe tournaments, had some kickboxing fights, I’d always been a martial artist. Since I was a kid. I was just interested in watching the UFC. And then I started training jiu-jitsu, and when I was training in jiu-jitsu, I was just a white belt, I was just starting out, that’s when I got hired by the UFC to be a post-fight interviewer. But I only did that for two years.”
Han berättar även att han faktiskt slutade en gång, men att UFC övertalade honom att komma tillbaka.
“I quit, it was just too much,”
“It was actually, just – I was actually losing money. I would make more money doing a weekend at a comedy club than I would doing the UFC. And it just got to a point where it was just too much of a pain in the ass. So I still remained a fan, but I backed away. And then the UFC was purchased by this company named Zuffa in 2001.
“When that happened, they started putting on shows in Vegas, and I would go there with my friends. They got me free tickets, they reached out. They would try and get celebrities to go sit there so that – cause they were very small at the time, they were hemorrhaging money, they were trying to build it up.
“And in talking to Dana White, one day I was talking to him about fights going on in Japan. ‘Do you know this guy?’ – and I was bringing up all these names – [He said] ‘Do you want to do commentary?’ [I said] I don’t want to do commentary, man. I’m here to get drunk and watch people kick the shit out of each other. I’m not here to work.’ And he talked me into it for one show. UFC 37.5.
UFC visade sin uppskattning över Joe Rogan via twitter med några filmklipp som ni kan se här nedan.
#OnThisDay in 1997…@JoeRogan made his debut on a UFC broadcast. 🎙 pic.twitter.com/ns49SLlIaP
— UFC (@ufc) February 7, 2019
And more interviews like these! 😂 pic.twitter.com/cb0qazhOsA
— UFC (@ufc) February 7, 2019
Ingen är perfekt men jag tror de flesta i alla fall anser att Rogan inte behöver skämmas över sin karriär i UFC. För den som vill se inslaget i Podcasten där Joe pratar om sin karriär finns det att titta på här ovan.
