Joe Rogan on Stephen A. Smith's Comments About Conor vs. Cowboy

So I looked at your Instagram yesterday and you had that video of Stephen A Smith and immediately I was like oh my goodness this explains so much play this play this Jamie watch this watch this. First of all someone needs to explain to me what's happening here. It looks like a punch to the left. I don't even think it's a dick. Unless that guy's got a two foot dick. Look how low he's punching. No idea man. This guy should not be allowed to talk about fighting. Yeah look. I'm going to cut him a little bit of slack. Only. Seriously. We had this here's the thing with Strikeforce. We had kind of a similar situation. Not like this though by the way. With Gus Johnson. I remember. Gus was trying to talk to him. And I love Gus when he's talking basketball. I think he's got the energy and the voice that makes people like oh wow they're gripped to the TV. This I can understand what Stephen A but this is not what you want to release. After you just called someone who's a pioneer in the sport you basically call him a quitter. You call the guy a quitter. First of all he had a broken orbital bone. OK. You say he was a quitter. He got his face smashed. Yeah. He got cracked by one of the biggest punchers in the sport. He he has the most wins in the sport. He has the most wins by finish. He has the most bonuses. I mean come on. He has the most fights. Come on. You're calling that guy a quitter. He got cracked. That's what happens. Look fighting is the only sport that you could end it early. Right. You can't end a football game in 40 seconds. Imagine imagine if you just your front line was so strong your fucking quarterback was so badass. You could storm a football game in 40 seconds. They'd be a different sport. Yeah. My concern with him though was that like look he's fine. He just did the video. I get it. It's good that you're trying to learn the sport. But I got to tell you like DC sent me this video and he basically commented on it. And I said I said he's trying to protect the DC is trying to protect him. I said you cannot protect this guy. Not from this. No. You can't call someone like Cowboys or any other. I'm sorry. Any other top guy in any organization. I don't care if it's UFC Bellator one. Any of them all the two all these organized. You cannot do that to these guys. These guys lay it on the line every time. We're not slapping a puck or hitting a baseball. Okay. We're really out there getting hurt. Yeah. And when someone calls you a quitter like that you better be. I'm not saying he should be careful like watch his back. But don't expect these fighters to be very courteous to you next time you walk in the hall. And that's the issue that I think we come across here with top fighters are very offensive when they get offended with things like this. Rightly so. Yeah. It's a different thing. There's the emotional cost of losing a fight is so much different than losing a game. It's not the same. And there's a culture in sports broadcasting whether it's radio or television this just diminishing of people. There's this shit talking that goes with sports. You know he always falls apart. That guy that motherfucker needs to give his money back. He sucks. He doesn't that. And the other guys like oh I can't believe you're saying that. And you could do that in sports radio. And people love it because if you're on the job site and you're listening to the radio and you know you're fucking hammering nails. You're like you're right. He does suck. And there's a mentality that goes along with that kind of sports radio sports guy talk. I hate that shit. I've resisted that from the beginning. And I've shit on those guys from the beginning because it's not the same thing. You're not talking about the same thing. You're talking about fighting. You're talking about unbelievable physical consequences including knock on wood in our sports. Very rare but death. Yeah. No it's true. But the other thing though too is that you're criticizing someone for being a quitter and someone who's been been there on every level of the game. Every level. But not only that but then you look like you've never played basketball or baseball or any other sport in your life either hit mitts like that. I'm sorry you cannot criticize people and to be on the talk show like you're saying those talk show radios. That's the energy you need to bring when you're going to get someone like Max Kellerman or any other or Skip Bayless and those guys. Go ahead and have that conversation with them. But you cannot can't look like that. And then talk shit. I'm sorry man. That culture the culture of the sport. Look Max Kellerman is a different animal. Max Kellerman is incredibly knowledgeable when it comes to sports and really so when it comes to boxing. He's not a shit talk. He's just more honest about. Yeah that's true. But there's a lot of currency in being a Stephen Smith. You know he's really entertaining. That shit talking that he does. He's a he's you know he's he's a guy that's fun to watch. He talks a lot of shit. He gets real loud and everybody disagrees with him and look it's made him a fantastic career. That's why. And he carries that over to MMA. I think it's a bad idea. Is it a stick though. That's my thought. My process like you know how Chael has his stick like he did. I get the camera turns off. Kobe has his stick. And when the camera turns off they're not that person. Right. Is he that person in real life. I think it blends in. You know. Is he just now inherited that person. So that's who he is now in real life. Andrew Dice Clay. Andrew Dice Clay. His real name is Andrew Silverstein. And the Dice man was a character that he used to do in his act. Dice Clay is like one of the best impressionists ever. Yeah. And he does like he does John Travolta and all these different people. And it's amazing. And in his act he would do all these impressions and he would do this guy. The Dice man. And he would do these fucking rhymes and he put this jacket on. And everybody loved that so much he just became the Dice man. And then after a few years he was a Dice man 24-7. He's wearing his leather jackets everywhere. Everywhere he goes he's got weightlifting gloves on. Every time you meet him he's got weightlifting gloves. He became this guy. Right. And it's a thing that happens to people sometimes. Where people love one thing. You lean into your fans. And I think Steve and Ace met. I don't know him as a human being. I've only met him a couple of times. He's a nice guy. Nice guy to me. We had a nice conversation. On air we had a little weirdness because he was just saying we didn't learn anything about Connor. I'm like the fuck you didn't. He just destroyed cowboy in 40 seconds. Like you learned something. You learned he could perform under the bright lights in a giant pay-per-view after more than a year and a half out of the game. Yeah you learned something. You just don't know what you saw. Yeah I agree with you 100% that he did learn something. I learned something from him. Like somebody who'd taken that amount of time off. And I'm going to say this to be frank. Obviously I work for Bellator and I do a lot of work for them. But the thing is you can't have to give credit where credit is due. I give credit to all the fighters. Doesn't matter if you're in one. Look Eddie to me is one of the best 55 pounders to ever walk the face of the earth. Connor McGregor to me. I thought he did things in that fight against Khabib that no other guy has been able to do. First off he won a round. That's something no one's ever. People say oh Khabib took the round off. Yeah because maybe he tried to finish him at the end of the second. But the bottom line is he still won the round. And there's not only that but there was a lot of times and opportunities where Khabib had a hard time getting the takedown. We didn't see that against guys with wrestling backgrounds like Abel Trujillo and those other guys. Where he was flinging around winning records basically for the most takedowns in one fight. There's tons of things that Connor does that people overlook and underestimate because he's such a knockout artist. And he's so good. And his stance and his style and things like he brought this to the next level. And you cannot discredit what he's done in the sport. What I learned from that is that from somebody who can take 15 months off and come back and perform the way that he did against someone like Donald Cerrone is absolutely amazing. That's why you need guys like you doing post fight commentary and discussing these things. Not people who don't understand the sport and practice dick punches. Well I want to... It's a different thing. It's basically just hitting babies. Yeah it's hitting babies. I want to ask you this though because it was funny because I could see your face in the middle of it all. How awkward is that for you to stand between the two of them and go... What are you guys fucking talking about? Yeah. I mean... I would have preferred to talk to DC or Felder or you or anybody who understands the sport. I don't think it's the right way to do it. The one gentleman to my right, Michael... Jamie, what is his last name? He was great. And Stephen Smith was very nice to me too and he said he's going to get into podcasts. I have no problem with him as a human being. No. I just think... Look, I don't know jack shit about baseball. I don't know jack shit about basketball. I literally don't even know the rules. I don't know when people foul people. I'm not sure why. I don't know what's happening. I know MMA. I understand it. So if you want to talk about MMA, I'd like to talk to MMA about someone else who knows MMA. Like you were saying though, I was watching this in one of your podcasts the other day with Mike Baker. And he said like look, I don't agree with Bernie Sanders' policies. But Bernie Sanders probably is a really nice guy. It doesn't mean that I have to like what he does in front of the camera, okay, for him to call in the man. I don't have to like that. I still like him as a person. That's where we need to make sure that we differentiate between the two things. Like, look, he probably is a really good guy. And I actually have met him. I met him at the Floyd Mayweather and Connor fight and said hi. He said, hey, how's it going? Like, hey, what do you think? And that was the conversation. It was real quick, real brief, maybe two minutes. But he seemed like a nice person at that time. But when I was listening to him talk and calling Cerrone basically a quitter, to me, I just lost respect. I lost respect in the avenue that you're not supposed to be working in our sport. Yes. And you need to make some sort of adjustment, whether it's dick punching or something else. But you need to figure it out. You need to like, I understand. I get that it's a good idea for all people that have never covered the sport to try to get into it. Okay. Maybe hold off on the videos like that for a while. Before you post them. Before you post them. Yeah. But I like that he's trying. And I'm going to give him credit for that. And I think like with Gus, there was a lot of rumblings about Gus Johnson in the very beginning. But we gave him a run for a while. And I really like Gus. He's a great person. Always been great every time I've talked to him and met with him and worked with him side by side as well. Calling fights with Strikeforce. Great person. But his forte is basketball. And for him, whatever his forte is, Stephen A. Smith, he's got, I think he may have to stick with that. And I think I agree. They have to bring D.C. back in to work with you alongside him. Well, he is phenomenal, man. Yeah, D.C.'s phenomenal. And D.C. and me having that conversation would have been a completely different conversation. And it would have been better for the sport. Because look, there's no positive in downplaying the career of Donald Cerrone or what he can do as a fighter. What that showed to me was how phenomenal Connor performed. That's what it showed me. And if either you or I was talking about cricket, we were on TV doing commentary on cricket, we would look out of place. We'd look, it would be fucked up and real cricket fans would be upset at us. Right? Now, that's nothing. That's just a sport, right? Yeah. This is, you are naked in the most literal sense of the word. You're naked physically, you're naked emotionally. When fighters lose, it's fucking devastating. For Connor to smash cowboy like that in front of his wife, his kid, his grandma, and then the whole world. Like, that is, you've got to have some respect for that man. You know, and this sport demands a different perspective. It's not the same thing as a ball going into hoop. It's not the same thing as crossing a line with a football. It's different. It's very intense and very personal. And it's also very fucking dangerous. And to play it off like it's just a game, I just, I don't agree with it. And I just think that we have plenty of fucking people out there that understand the sport. There's plenty of them. Yeah. But the thing about him is he's really popular. And Jamie, when you say he just got a giant deal or something like that. I had his contract up. He's got like an extension to get like eight million a year now or something like that. Yeah. And that's because he's so, his personality is so fun. He's a fun guy to watch. And people love shit talking. They love two people arguing about shit. One person's better at arguing. And Stephen A. Smith is really good at that stuff. But it's not the place for MMA. It's just not the place. It's not the same thing. It's not because the guys themselves can fight. When you see what happened last night at Kansas State or whatever and they started throwing punches. It looked like a bunch of girls throwing windmills. You know what I mean? That's really the reality. It's like now if he wants to go out there and talk about it, go ahead and talk about it. He can say all the things he wants because these are college kids that can't fight. Obviously we just saw. But we're talking about professional athletes. Their life has been around this craft. And now you're going to say things like that. It's very disrespectful. It's just so common with sports to talk about a guy who can't show up on game day. To talk about a guy who keeps dropping the ball. Talk about a guy who fights. And you shit on those guys. But it's just a different thing with fighting. And it's also with fighting. You have to know it. Or no one's going to respect you. If you don't know what you're talking about. And you're talking about it in front of millions of people. Man, that's a bad look for everybody. It's a bad look for ESPN. It's a bad look for him. It's a bad look for the sport. There's other people that can do this. Yeah, we caught a lot of flak for Gus for a while. The only strike force did. And then they get trickled on up to CBS. Well then Nitti is mayhem brawl. These things happen in MMA. Yeah, that's definitely not the words you want to use in that situation. You know what I mean? But it does, honestly, like you just said, it does reflect badly. Not just on ESPN itself, but the UFC as well. Because they're in business together. And it kind of looks bad for both. Like hey, you guys, we need to monitor who's behind that microphone. Because we're representing our talent. And our talent is what makes us the money. But what's funny is, with Stephen A. Smith, he's his personality and his brand is based on that kind of shit talking. So this is all good for him. This is all good for him. Like the more people talk shit about him, the better it is for him. And then he just ramps it up even more. And more people are paying attention. The ratings go up. Until he sees Cowboy in an elevator. Go ride a fucking head, buddy. Who's quitting now, bitch? You know, those are the things that I got to tell you. You just don't know. Think about this. If he said something like that about a Nate or Nick Diaz, and they saw him in a fucking elevator. They would fuck him up. They would fuck him up. Legitimately. Like you would just got to be like, those are scenarios. You just got to be careful. Cowboy's never going to do that. Hey, man. Kind of just watch what you say. Come on, man. Like that. You know, my family's there. My grandmother's there. You know, my kids there. Like, you know, let's dial it back a little bit. That's Cowboy's a fucking. He's just an amazing person, you know, overall. Yeah. So when you're talking, yeah, when you're talking about athletes and find it like Nate Diaz, though, he ain't saying shit to you. He's just going to sock you. Look, everybody knows what happened. What happened is Connor had a spectacular performance. Cowboy got caught off guard and he got finished quick. That's what happened. Yeah. All the other stuff is unnecessary. The emotional devastation of a 40 second KO like that is we have as a respectful human being. You got to leave all that other stuff alone. All that shit talking. If you want to say it in the gym to one of your homies and you're just hanging out and maybe one of them doesn't like Cowboy and you know, and someone talks trash and that's private and no one hears it, that's fine and good. But when you want to do that publicly, you want to broadcast that and then also do it on ESPN. I think it's just it's just shortsighted and I think it's foolish. Yeah, I'm going to go a little bit more hard on the paint on guys like DC who are on my post right there. The one that is defending him right now. That's what it is. Well, hey, man, he's trying to learn this board. I said, D quit trying to tell the company line, son. That's what you're doing right now. And then I got Kendall Grove that goes on there to say, Oh, you know what? I can respect the fact that he's trying to learn it. Look at this. It's fine. He's trying to better understand our sport. It means he's a massive star who could talk from his perch and no one can touch him. Yet he chooses to try and learn the game. So there's some way to his opinion. You're a little off base champ. DC's a wonderful person. He's just I said, I told my son, look, just because Stephen Smith might be good for business and the ESP business for you later on, I said, that doesn't mean you got to toe that line, buddy. I'd like to give him a hard time. But DC is one of my best friends, man, and he's absolutely hilarious and just fun. He likes to do this to stir the pot because like you were just saying with Stephen A, he likes to do this type of stuff. So people keep talking. DC likes to try and manage it like this. So we're here right now talking about DC in this whole situation. That's exactly what DC does. He's brilliant when it comes to this type of stuff. Yeah. And I'm sure he really does love Stephen A as a person. Stephen A, he's a nice guy. Like I said, I've met him a couple of times. He's a nice guy. But just so like there's a there's a style of broadcasting that sports radio and sports broadcasting that they do this kind of stuff. But when it leaks over into fighting, fighting is just not a sport. You can call it a sport. It's kind of a sport, but it's it's sport in its highest sense of expression where it's you're literally using your body to try to stop another man's body. And it is intense as it gets. And I think it deserves more respect. That's just my opinion. That's how I've always treated it. That's how I've when I when I talk about fighters or my my concentration has always been to elevate my concentration has never been to demean someone unless there's something that they did that's illegal. If there's some sort of sort of blatant foul that should be stopped or something that's really dangerous that they're doing that should be chastised. But the sport is it's just it's it's a higher level of consequence and risk and every and it needs to be respected that way. Yeah, I feel so I got a I listened to your show quite a bit. And I like a lot of what you had talked about before when you first got into comedy about talking about how some of the other comics was like kind of shit on other young comics kind of up and coming. And when you came in, it was like a different you try to just ingrain people like, hey, I want to build you all all of you guys up that are with me on the same set. If we're doing the show, we're all on the same night. Let's all just fucking make each other look good. I feel like especially in fighting, whether it's boxing, MMA, anything along those lines, we got to be elevated in each other to make each other better. Like, hey, this guy is good. This guy is good without talking shit because we like yourself specifically as well as like even myself and other guys that have shows and podcasts and start talking. We're on a plot on a different level of platform that can really kind of either make or break some people's careers. Yeah. It also with also the sport is confidence. Okay, MMA is a confident level. Anytime you do wrestling, it's a one on one, combative sport into wrestling MMA confidence is key. If my confidence is low, then that means that I'm not probably not going to perform my best. And when you take a loss, it goes lower and lower. When you got to hear it from fucking people that don't know the business like this right here, it's just another thing added on. And for other MMA guys to shit on other MMA guys, all that does is tear them down even more and you could potentially, I'm not saying ruin their career, but you're not helping them get to their goals and their levels. It's better if everyone shines and we all handle ourselves with a class and respect.