Joe Rogan on Max Holloway vs. Brian Ortega

That like the Till Tyrone Woodley fight, well Till's chance is standing up. That's it. And you know, if I was Tyrone, I'd take him to the ground. I mean, Tyrone's a far better wrestler, far much more experienced. But like there's some fights where you're like, man, like here's one this weekend. Brian Ortega, Max Holloway. Who the fuck knows how that's gonna go? Like I've bounced that one around my head and people have come up to me on the street like, hey man, who's gonna win this fight this weekend? Like especially Hawaiians. Yeah. Hawaiians are super excited for Max Holloway to win again. I mean, he's the new BJ Penn, right? It may be a different level. Max Holloway's a motherfucker. That's one of those fights. Yeah, it's very hard to pick. Was that even? Like it's pretty even? It's gotta be. I mean, what's here the Vegas odds are? By the way, I love the fact that you can actually gamble on fights now online. Like it's legal basically, right? You can kind of do it, right? If you were a fighter, would you mite on yourself? Depending on the state you're in, that's for sure. I wouldn't want to think about it. Unless I knew. Unless the guy was a fucking asshole. And he's like, I'm gonna go smash this dude. There's just no- It's very close. They're both minus, minus 105, minus 125, which would be Holloway as the favorite, slight favorite. That makes sense. That makes sense. That should be how it is, slight favorite, because he's the champion. You know what's interesting? What Hawe said, he goes, it's kind of weird when the new thing is older than the current thing. Because he's like, I'm younger, man. I'm the fucking champ. I beat Aldo. I beat all these dudes. I'm younger, and yet this guy is the new thing coming up to challenge me. He's like, motherfucker, I'm the younger fighter. It's kind of funny. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, we haven't seen something like Ortega a little bit in the Federal Way division. Guy submitting, like only submissions off to the one with the Cub. Yeah. I think that was beautiful. He readjusted on that guillotine too. That's probably the hardest submission to readjust. One hand hanging on, readjusting, and then still sinking it in against Cubs. It's not like Brandon Bishop or whoever. It's Cubs one. That's crazy, man. He's a direct lineage. He's real Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. He is Henner and Huron. He comes from Horion. That's school. This is where Brian Ortega comes from. He's direct from those mats, and his technique is like a razor blade. It's so sharp. It's so sharp and precise and so honed and just through drills and a constant emphasis on proper leverage and position. I mean, there are sticklers to that old style of Jiu-Jitsu. There's an unfortunate word that people like to use that sometimes pisses people off. Vitti Magalhays used this to describe Minotaro, and he didn't mean it in a negative way, but he meant the basics. He's like his Jiu-Jitsu is very basic. People go, fuck you, my Jiu-Jitsu is basic, but the basic is like the best. The fundamentals. There's guys that have those basics like Hachigracy. His Jiu-Jitsu is mostly the basics. He's not doing any crazy Delaheva shit or anything that you've never seen before. What was that? He's not doing anything where you never saw it before. Strict guard pass, smashing on top, triangle mount, arm triangle, arm bar. Everything he does is classic Jiu-Jitsu, but it's just so perfect. Everything, the leverage and the weight and the emphasis on certain positions over others, it's all like basic classic Jiu-Jitsu, and that's Brian Ortega. His Jiu-Jitsu is just so rock solid fundamentals. He's all about fundamentals though. Even his boxy's not, I don't believe he's as good a boxer as Max, but he's fundamentally sound, strong and direct with his boxing. He knocked out Frankie. He knocked out Frankie. He submitted Moikano, who I think is one of the dark horses in that division. Hanato Moikano is a fucking beast man. He's so good. Mike Brown has nothing but praise for him, man. He's like, that kid is legit. He's going to challenge for that title. I believe that. I believe that. And he's super respectful and intelligent and everything about him I like. I love his approach, the way he fights. And in that fight, Ortega made him shoot because he was beating him standing up and he shot and Ortega was like, thank you. The guillotine is just a death grip. He's just got a vice. Just clamps down on your fucking life. There's no room. There's no room. You're going to sleep or you're going to tap. He's a big kid. He's like my size. He's big. He's a big kid. Max is big too. Max is huge. Max was 185 when they told him about the Khabib Nurmagomedov fight. The horrible thing about that fight was that he lost all that weight really rapidly for no reason. And then they wound up pulling him out of the fight. The commission was like, fuck this. You can't fight. And a lot of us at the time were like, why is the commission telling a champion whether or not he can make weight? Let him try to make weight. Get the fuck out of there. You don't know what you're doing. But then you find out after that, that like when he was preparing for the first fight with Ortega and he was experiencing these weird concussion like symptoms, but they said he didn't have a concussion. And then people were saying, no, this is weight loss. This is rapid weight cutting. His body is responding to the fact that he just went through this and now he's trying to do it again. And his body is rejecting it. So this is a bunch of theories. There's not, they're not giving us a whole lot of information about exactly what's wrong with him medically or what was wrong, whether they know it or not. I don't know. Right. But even Ortega has been saying all week, like, what the fuck was wrong with him? Why not? How come they're not telling us? Like, what if it happens again? Like Ortega has got to be thinking right now, here we are today. It's Wednesday. Tomorrow's Thursday, the weigh-in's Friday. He only got a couple of days. Like, we don't know whether or not this is even actually going to happen. Right? Like, what if it gets down to Thursday and Friday and he's in the middle of the weight cut and he starts blacking out or he starts experiencing those symptoms again, they pull him out of the car. Moicano's on standby, you know. I did not know that. Yeah. He's on standby for this fight. That, yeah, I see. And then then it becomes an interim title. It must, it has to. It can't be, they're not going to strip them. But then what happens? I mean, a guy like Max, that, I don't know, it's, it's one of those situations where it's like, if that happens multiple times, like, what do you have to do? Can, can you continue to, how much longer can you continue to fight at that weight? I don't think he can continue to fight at that weight very much longer because I think he severely compromises himself getting down to 45, but he's been able to do it because he's a champion. But, and I think if you do have a, like a George Lockhart in your corner, a guy that gets you to do it scientifically and then rehydrate yourself scientifically, it can be done. And you can pull it off and 24 hours later you can fight at a very high level. But is that the way to go? I mean, your kidneys start breaking down, your body starts getting beat up. I mean, your organs don't want to get dried out like that. Your brain doesn't want to get dried out like that. Your muscles don't want to get dried out like that. There's just no way you perform at your best when you're just at death's door 24 hours ago and now here you're fighting again.