Joe Rogan on Bellator's Budget Cuts

So I was going to ask you, how's it been working with Jimmy Smith? I love that guy. He's brilliant. He's a very smart guy. I tried to get him hired about four years ago. Yeah. And I was, because the UFC was looking for, first of all, trying to do less commentary because I was traveling too much and I was trying to do less. I was like, you got to hire this guy. He's the best. Yeah. He's really, really good. He's smart. I love listening to him. We're doing our first show together in April. Okay. The Tony Ferguson, Habib Nurburgam Medoff fight. Oh, good. Good. And he's going to be, it's a perfect fight for, you know, us. So who's color and play by play then? Is he doing play by play and you're doing color? No, no, no. John Anick's doing play by play and Jimmy and I are both doing color. Yeah. We're just going to have fun. He's a friend, you know, and he's been on the podcast a bunch of times with buddies. So it'll be, it'll be a good time. And didn't he cut his teeth doing a TV show about combat sports or about, he did, what was that? Fighting around the world or whatever, learning different arts. Was it called fight sport? What was it called? Something like that. Yeah. It was, yeah, he did that. But I mean, I think he's, but he also had MMA fights and he's a legit black belt in jujitsu. He's super smart and well-read guy too. Yeah. I'm excited. I'm excited that he's on board. Yeah. I always liked listening to him. Yeah. Bellator fucked up. They fucked up and they let that guy. I couldn't, I was wondering what, so what was, I'm not the pride, but my guess was he's just asked for more money probably because he had an offer from the UFC. They wouldn't match it, so he took off, whatever. They didn't want him leaving for the UFC four years ago when I tried to get him hired. And there was like a big hullabaloo and they wound up keeping him. And then I think his contract was up and I think the way he described it was they actually wanted to give him less money than he was getting. And it's like, I think they're just experiencing some severe budget cuts. If you think about Bellator's market, like what they're trying to do, they don't have a pay-per-view business. And if you don't have a pay-per-view business, where's the bulk of all your money coming from? It's like kind of bleeding Viacom. Right. I just thought, when it happened, I said, why didn't they change the name when Coker was brought in to take over? It made zero sense to me because Bellator had that, from Bjorn Rebney, I've never been a Bjorn Rebney fan, Bjorn Rebney from that boxing promoter type, whatever it was. And everybody that I talked to in that business, they were all terrified and intimidated and everything else. It was a lot of shit. I've never met the guy I don't know anything about other than the bad things that I've heard from fighters. Right. And so, you know. King Mo calling him a dick writer. King Mo. King Mo and I go back and forth on the internet, on Facebook and stuff. I'll deliberately piss him off on political stuff and just get him stirred up. He's an underappreciated talent when it comes to fighting too. Yeah, no. That guy was... Talked about a monster. Had some serious physical problems though, like with Mursa, he had some serious staph infections. Right, right. Some real bad ones that wrecked him. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That fucking shit scared him. He's a great guy though. We talk now and then when I say great stuff. He's a great guy. He is. He's a cool dude. But, God, where were we? What were we talking about? Bellator. We changed the name. Yeah, but Bellator, why did you want it? They should have changed the name. Yeah. It's just synonymous with tournaments and a guy loses the title and suddenly he's thrown back into a tournament. He's already made his name. Yeah. He's a shitty business model. Yeah. Bellator was for the Spanish speaking crowd, right? Right. Wasn't that what they were trying to get out of that whole thing? I think it's a Latin word, right? I think it's or a Roman word for gladiator or some shit. But yeah, it started out as wasn't on like ESPN Deportes or something like that? Yeah. But it just didn't make sense with Coker taking over and I don't want to watch the Geritol Posse fight. That's all they're doing. I don't want to see a Pat Milletitch fight. I don't want to see it, right? Right. Everybody's... I love some of those guys, but I don't want to watch it. I agree. It's a young man sport. It's guys that are animals, fast movers, just beasts, invincible human beings in their mid-20s to 30, whatever, early 30s. A guy that's 45 years old, it's just not... Not just 45, but 45 years old with MMA miles on them. That's the real issue. Right. It's that these guys, their bodies have been beaten up for so many decades in the gym and all the years of wrestling and kickboxing. They're just not the same. No. It takes its toll. It definitely takes its toll and you're just not the same guy. I mean, it's part of me that respects the shit out of a guy like Hoys Gracie. He's still a fucking savage at 50 years of age, ready to throw down with anybody. He wouldn't fight me. He wouldn't? Son of a... When was this? I've been trying to... I mean, with Bellator, I said, fricking get Gracie to fight me. When he was fighting Shamrock, I confronted Shamrock on Axis. That was one of the worst fights that I had before was when Matt beat the shit out of him. When Matt took his back and was smashing him and I was like, Jesus Christ, I was like, this is so mismatched.