Veteran UFC caller, Joe Rogan has heaped praise on the organization for now just building the sport of mixed martial arts, but revolutionizing it beyond any sort of doubt.
Loyal to the Octagon leader since his debut on the screen back in 1997 in a trip to Alabama, Rogan has remained steadfast in support of the Dana White-led outfit in the years since.
An avid combat sports practitioner, Rogan is also a decorated Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt under both Jean Jacques-Machado and Eddie Bravo. To boot, he also enjoyed an impressive amateur kickboxing tenure, managing to lodge various viral knockout wins in the process — landing him much acclaim.
The UFC commentator, however, believes that nothing has made martial arts so culturally significant as the UFC. And in doing so, the Dana White-led promotion has also helped it evolve beyond anything anyone would have imagined in a pre-UFC world.
Crediting the UFC for establishing martial arts to the mainstream, Rogan claimed the promotion has done more than any other body or source to revolutionize the sport in over tens of thousands of years.
“Martial arts has changed more since the invention of the UFC,” Rogan told fellow comic, Jimmy Carr, on his podcast this week.
“And the invention of the UFC was by Rorion Gracie. And that was in 1993. Since that time, martial arts have evolved more in these 30 years, than they have in the last 30,000 years. That’s a fact,” the JRE host claimed with usual self-satisfaction.
However, for all his lauding of the UFC, Rogan has suggested a stunning change of setting for fights — ditching a rather large proponent.
Rogan would change the essence of what makes the UFC special
Forever claiming the promotion should just ditch their patented Octagon altogether, Rogan has long suggested a rather interesting idea.
As far as he’s concerned, the Octagon limits just how technical a fight can be. In his opinion, fights should be hosted in an open venue — ideally across a basketball court.
“I don’t even think they [fighters] should fight in a cage,” Rogan said on his podcast years ago.
“I think the cage is an unnecessary element in fighting. To push someone against something or to be able to get up from something. I don’t think it’s necessary,” he noted, adding, “Have a warning track where if you go outside the warning track too many times, you could lose points.”
It should be noted that the UFC commentator has made it a point to re-introduce the idea more than few times on his podcast and other spaces.
“Netflix has 94 million monthly active users,” the JRE host noted. “The company has over 300 million paid global subscribers. So 300 million worldwide,” deduced a clearly impressed Rogan.
