Are the Best Fighters in the UFC? w/Josh Thomson | Joe Rogan

It's no different than when we watch, have you ever watched American Idol? Hey, how come you're not a star yet? Well, because I don't know how the business works. I don't know how to get in front of people that can make me a star. That goes with all the fighters too. How do I get in the UFC? I don't know. That's the thing. You got to find a way in. And if they don't know how to get in, then they're stuck living in the woods somewhere and you know, trying to... And if they don't see that clear path, they might not have the same level of commitment, so they might slack off or find something else to do. Very true. It's... And we started about this because Brendan was saying that if you're not in the UFC, you're not shit. I mean, I think that's a crazy perspective because when I look at, like we're talking about Lima, like there are guys out there, like I look at Lima and I go, he might be able to beat everybody. I really believe that. That guy is fucking terrifying. The way he knocked out Michael Venom Page. Yeah. He might be able to beat everybody. To say no, like, come on, man. Watch that guy fight. Look at his fucking power. Look at the way he knocked out Koroshkov. Look at those fucking leg kicks, man. He tortures guys with those leg kicks. He's so powerful. Let's... Here's the thing though. Let's not forget, when Roy left, he was still one of the top guys in the UFC. And just because... And look, I don't know. I'm not trying to like dig or dunk. But what Dana does very well is he develops the narrative and then the media runs with that narrative very well. So they... Before he even... Before they even put pen to paper, Dana's already wrote the story for them because he knows... He's already gave them the narrative. Like, you and I were talking about it earlier with Connor. He made Donald Cerrone. He caused him to lose in 40 seconds. Dana came out and said, it's not that Connor's... or Cowboy's bad. It's that Connor looked that good. That narrative was written for all the media to go ahead and follow because that's... before they wrote pen to paper, that's what the narrative was. He wrote the narrative for them. I just feel that like, look, there's guys out there that can cross boards all across. Neem is one of them. Patricio is one of them. There's guys, I think at 135 pounds that we have, that can do it as well. We've got tons of guys, not just us, even in one. But I would put our guys... I would... And I understand... I say our, but I just say because I came from Strike Force and we got no respect, man. It was so hard, Joe. I'm telling you... I'm the Strike Force guys integrated with UFC. We realized like how many of them became champions. Luke Rockhold and how many of them were world class guys. Musasi. There's so many guys. Tim Kennedy. So many guys came over from Strike Force. You have to remember this is I've been getting criticized for years... not criticized. I've been being told for years that I was never a top guy for years because I was in Strike Force. And I said, well, I also know what the guys in UFC are making and I'm making more in Strike Force. I'm gonna stay here. Like at the end of the day to me, it's about making money. Like this is... I'm a prize fighter. Let's talk about that. Isn't it weird though that like this is the only sport... MMA is the only sport where you have these names of these organizations and they're more... Like boxing, nobody gives a fuck if it's a WBC title or the WBO title. They don't care. They care. Is it Deontay Wilder? Is he fighting? I want to see him fight Tyson Fury. I don't give a fuck if it's for the Bubblegum title. It doesn't mean anything to me. But for MMA for some reason, because the promotions become like the NFL or the NBA, it becomes the big thing. We know there's world class fighters everywhere. It's not like basketball or football where the best guys are definitely playing in the NFL. There's so many different organizations and I almost feel like fighters are hampered by names of these promotions. I almost think like we'd all be better off if it was just MMA. To call it the UFC, the problem with that is it's great because everybody knows it's a very high quality to the UFC events. The production value is amazing. There's so much attached to it and so much history. But at the end of the day, it's about MMA fights. That's what it's about. And whether it's in Bellator or 1FC, it's about how good are these match ups, how good are the fighters, what am I going to see? Well, I believe it all started when credentials were taken away from top MMA media websites and saying, hey, we don't like what you say. You're not going to get a credential to get in. So then they replaced, they brought in the other media websites or whatever it was, USA Today, whatever it was, other media sites that came in and just said it's all about UFC. It wasn't a sport anymore. It was a UFC brand and we had the best fighters. And once you took away sure dogs credentials, all the other people that were doing what other companies at that time had web, they took those credentials away. Now whoever came in was like, well, shit, they're going to do it to those big time MMA websites. Why would they would do the same shit to me if I don't toe the line? And that all of a sudden became like fighters. Now when you see them, it's all about UFC. It's not about anything that they're doing. Like you as a fighter, I think, look, even though it's an individual sport and sure you guys should be pumping your organization, I get it, but you should also be pumping you because after you're done, the UFC will be fine. You need to worry about building your brand, whatever it is you do to make you big. And it's all for, I'm all for the organization. The organization does a lot for fighters. I'm not here to piss on any company or any organization. They need to make sure though that they're doing what they can to make as much money as they possibly can. And I go back to the strike forcing. I was making almost double what the guys were making in the top five in the UFC at the time. Now there was a lot of talk about backroom bonuses and this and that, but I was, I was all privy to a couple of those back year bonuses when we got bought out and I went over there. They were not what I was making on the other side of the rope. So just to give you an example, when I came over, they were like, oh wow, you're making that. They were like, well, what do we got to do? We only have one fight left. And I was like, well, you got to match or at least beat it. You know, like what I'm making now. And in the thought process was like, where the fuck am I going to go though? Josh, you're kind of fucking stepping on your own dick here. You know, it's tricky, right? Because you negotiate correctly. No, I couldn't really. Yeah. And that was the thing. I couldn't really negotiate at the time and I was just like, shit. All right. Well, let's play this out. So I took the least amount of fights I could possibly take wondering if Bellator was going to be around long and you know, and if Scott was going to stick with UFC or if he was going to try to go do his own promotion again. You know, a lot of a lot of my relationships come from people that have been around with Koger to me is I think one of the best guys, if not the best guy I've ever done business with. I've learned a lot from watching him on how he approaches not just fighters, but the promotion itself. You know, the one thing I admire the most about him is that like, you just don't, you don't need to shit on other people like the UFC or one to say that my organization is the best. He takes that martial arts attitude and approach to a lot of things. And he never, I've never heard him say bad things about Dana White, never in a public or private conversation. And I, I have golf with, I play golf with him a lot. I have lunch with him a lot. I've never once heard him say anything bad about Dana White or anybody else in the UFC. That's not his approach. His approach is I'm going to have fights. I'm going to try to make my guys that are fighters as much money as I can. And my organization is going to do something that we're going to do and let them do what they're going to do. I appreciate that. Yeah. He's a very universally loved guy. I would really like cross promotion fights.