Joe Rogan on the Early Days of the UFC

Hello freak bitches. But you know, we couldn't figure out how to put the different fighting sports together, right? So whose rules to use? Right. I mean, so really the basis of the UFC was always, you know, no rules became, you know, this huge thing, but it was also whose rules to use? Mm-hmm. I mean, how are you going to get a boxer against the jiu-jitsu guy? Right. What are you going to use? You can't. There's no rules you can use. How do you try to gouge eyes? Was that legal in the early one? Well, you know, you know what? I mean, I always would hear about these Wing Chun masters. They'd had 50 ways to pop your eye out with their thumb. And I kept calling them going, bring your thumbs and do it, man. Don't talk about it. Come and pop everybody's eye out. I wonder. What would you have done if a guy lost an eye though? What would you have done? We'd pick it up. What are you going to do? What would we do? You know, come on. There's also, there's a reality to fighting that you know better than most people on the planet, right? If you're defending yourself, you're defending yourself, whether it's from a right hook, you know, right cross, an elbow, a knee, or having your eye gouged out. You're blocking. You're aware. You know, if a guy comes at you with his thumbs up to do the gouge, you're in a defensive position. Well, it is interesting though how many people are getting poked in the eyes now when it's illegal and how often it happens. And what, you know, the reality of how devastating the results are. When guys get their corneas scratched and they get a fingernail in the eye, they get a finger jab in the eye, even if it's accidental, man, they scream and run away. Eyes are sensitive. Is it any different in other sports? The same in football if someone gets their hand inside the helmet. It's same in, you know, boxing. You know, in the old days, guys used to do stuff to the gloves. Roberto Duran versus Davey Moore. He thumbed him in the eye and well, he was kicking his ass anyway, but Davey Moore couldn't see out of his eye. And Roberto beat the fucking shit out of him. So, you know, the UFC didn't invent this. No, thumbing is a long time strategy in boxing and they actually developed gloves that have the thumb pinned down because of that. Because in the old days, the thumb would detach from the glove. And even when it's like stitched in a little bit, you can still kind of get it in there. You can get it in there if you're just trying to poke a guy in the eye, which many people did do. That's definitely a dirty trick. Well, it is a fight. You know, I mean, Shamrock, who did he fight? This was like UFC three or four. He said, maybe one of the preliminaries, someone reached into his speedos and moved his cup out of the way so he could knee him. And Ken was going, dude, we're fighting. You know, if you want to, we can get together later. But you know, for right now, hands out of my speedos. Well, there was a fight between Gary Goodridge and the Pedro in Brazil, a famous fight. It was like straight up Valley Tudo, no gloves, no rules. And Gary Goodridge reached into his fucking pants and grabbed his balls and crushed them. He was and Gary Goodridge. I guess that is the cockfight. Yeah, it was pretty sure it was Gary Goodridge. That doesn't sound like his style, but you know better. Back in the day. Yeah. Here, let me pull it out. Well, he was an arm wrestling champ, so maybe he figured that was playing to his strength. You know, Yank your Franklin. This was, I'm pretty sure it was Gary Goodridge. Yeah, Gary Goodridge versus the Pedro. This was way back in the day from 1997. And he, yeah, vicious, great at that. How very 1997 isn't back in the day? Yes, it is. Still back in the day. Not to me. Not to you. Well, you were in the game for four years by then. Yeah, dude reached into his pants and fucking crushed his balls. You know what Forrest Griffin said to me at the 20th anniversary? He goes, you know, I love the early UFCs because I would have entered earlier, but I didn't want to wear those speedos. I wanted to wear man pants. That sounds like something Forrest would say. When you guys first created the UFC in 1993, how long did it take from the initial idea to the first pay-per-view? Whoa. You know what? Nobody's ever asked me that, Joe. You know, Art Davey called me to pitch me War of the Worlds in April of 93, and we were on in November. Really? So, and you know, and you need three month lead time for pay-per-view, so, you know, it was like, it was a go. Wow. So, you guys realize right away what a great idea this is going to be. Oh, it was, I realized that on an art school, you know. How can you not, same with you. You saw it, you loved it. You know, I heard about it. I really did see it as a live, you know, a real life Mortal Kombat. That is really what I saw when I imagined what it would look like, you know. And I thought, who would not watch that? I'm watching it. It's my show. I probably would pay myself to watch it. I mean, it's just how can you not watch that? I got aboard, like I said, in 94, I found the video of UFC 2. And I don't think UFC 1 was even available on video, right? Wasn't there some sort of a dispute? What, 2? No, no, it wasn't a dispute, but Don Gold, you know, who we all know and love and is still at the UFC, he bought 2 and at the same time bought 1. And back in those days, you tried to release the videos to be fresh. So he didn't want to release 1 before 2. We wanted 2 to be the first one, come out very close to the event, all the hoopla, and then later on added 1. Also as you know, 1 had arguably the worst commentator team in the history of sports. Bill Goldberg and Jim Brown. Jim, I liked. Jim Brown. Jim Brown was cool then. I still think he's cool, but what's Superfoot, man? Supermoron, you know. How dare you? How dare you? He's a goddamn hero. He's a karate hero. Bill's Superfoot Wallace. Is that, he's a karate hero? I thought he was a... A karate hero. Is that what he did? Oh, he was a badass kickboxer. Did you not know? A kickboxer, of course I knew. I was standing backstage and I'm trying to explain to him the name of the show, which is not the Ultimate Fighting Challenge. You know, maybe it's just a subtle difference, you know, but to me it meant a lot, Championship versus Challenge. I'm trying to explain it to him. And he is practicing his kicks over my head. I'm not such a tall guy, but he was a high kicker, right? So he's doing these kicks over my head as I'm going, Bill, try to remember the name of the show. So he's just showing off or something? What is he doing? I think he was that... Being silly? He being silly, yeah, and just showing he was too cool for school. Yeah, I got it. And I said to him, I go, are we going to see any kicks like that? He goes, ah, no, you do that in a real fight, they'll rip your balls off. I'm like, dude, isn't that what you teach? No, he's a jerk off. He's not a hero. Really? He's a jerk off. So there's only a couple... Well, there's actually more than a couple of people. I'm maybe still annoyed at. Back then, before email, right? When you wanted to communicate something, you had to write it down, put it in an envelope, use a government issued form of sticker thing you put on an envelope, and you sent it through a government process. And it was called the mail, right? Okay, so there's no email. So Bill Superfoot shows up, gets the name wrong, burps into the thing, pays no attention, does a horrible job, takes the money, and then three days later in Black Belt Magazine, an editorial comes out how he says he's totally against it. So he must have written that. Before he did it. Like six weeks before. So he just did it for the check? I don't know. I mean, it wasn't that big a check. It was probably $2,500. I mean, if that was life changing for him, he's in bad shape. But I think he didn't like it. Like a lot of the guys that I think of as paper tigers, right? I think it was a threat. Well, you can't call Bill Superfoot Wallace a paper tiger. Bill Superfoot Wallace was a great kickboxer. He really was. I saw him fight live. He was a bad ass kickboxer. I saw him fight live deep into his 40s. He came out of an era of kickboxing when it really was a great thing to watch, right? And he was a great kickboxer. He's from the Chuck Norris era. Absolutely. And there was a bunch of guys, what's his name? Rick Rufus. Rick the Jet Rufus. Yeah, tried to get him Benny the Jet. Benny the Jet or Keydas. Yeah, I mean, I was after all these guys and it was just a little bit too late in the day for them, right? For Benny. Benny was, yeah, they were retired. And you're right, I shouldn't go off like that. As a kickboxer, he was something. He really was. You just didn't enjoy working with him. I didn't enjoy working with him. I thought it was bullshit to show up ready to condemn something or already have condemned it, and not pay enough attention to get the name right, and something that was his history making as our first event. But anyway, maybe it's better they were horrible because it just goes down in the record books as the worst commentating team of all time. Well, it goes down as the beginning and everything. I mean, I sucked when I first started doing it too. No one had any background in it. No one knew what to do. Yeah. You know, I didn't know about your fighting background when I asked your manager to do it. What I liked was your comedy style. I liked your persona. And when I talked to Jeff, he goes, you know, he was a kickboxer or something. I forget what he said. It wasn't very specific. I was like, really? He was a fighter. That's how I found out about it. But I always thought you had a tough guy persona that seemed very right for the show. And we needed someone, God knows, that could talk when all hell was breaking loose because hell broke loose pretty regularly in those days. Yeah. And you had a couple guys that were doing the post-fight interviews that just weren't so good at it. They just weren't so good at media. Like Tony Blauer, who's a really good martial artist, knows a lot about self-defense. We had to choose between people that sort of knew what was going on and real announcers. Right. Right? I mean, that was the choice because we couldn't find anyone. Do you know Brian Kilmeade, you know, started out doing this too? Who's Brian Kilmeade? He's on a show called Fox and Friends. You know, it's like- He started out doing this? He did- Oh, I know exactly who that guy is. True five, I think. And Brian, if you're listening or anyone knows Brian, I'm sorry if I got the number wrong. But you know, and Bruce Beck, you know, of course, was excellent. Bruce Beck was excellent. Bruce Blotnik, you know, this- Bruce Beck, to this day, I owe Bruce a debt of gratitude. He gave me some really good pointers when I first started doing the post-fight interviews. He gave me some real good pointers on like, you know, like what to say or what to say if you're stuck and, you know, like how to do it. He's a pro. And he changed- He's a really good guy too. So did Blotnik, you know, to have- Jeff in there. That was good. Yeah, Olympic gold medalist. I mean, awesome dude too. Really, really, he was a great guy. It's so sad when he passed. I really miss that guy. He was a really fun guy to do commentary with too, just a real genuine, nice person. You know, he had this like before the show or backstare, if there was any problem, he was unflappable. And it just kind of gave off a calm. It sort of helped. Because like not everybody on the team was calm. Right, right, right. He was. Yeah. He was a great wrestler too. Knew a lot about wrestling, you know, and eventually developed his knowledge of MMA, jiu-jitsu skills, and was really interested in learning, you know. I remember there's some videos of him rolling with Frank Shamrock, like very, very early in the day. Back, I think when Frank was the champion and- That's about the time of it. Yeah. I left right when Frank won, when he beat Kevin Jackson and Armbard him in Japan. I didn't go to the Japan show. That was when I quit. I was like, that's- When did you quit? About 98, somewhere around then. Just right around when Frank won the title. I was so sick of the UFC at that point. I really was. It was missing. It was weird for me too. It was like, you know, it was all these little tiny propeller planes to these strange places, Augusta, Georgia, and Dothanella. Augusta wasn't, you know, I kind of liked Augusta, you know. You liked Augusta. It wasn't bad. Good barbecue. Yeah, good barbecue and somewhat friendly town, you know, as opposed to Charlotte, where they invited me never to return. The chief of police said to me, if you come back, I'm not sure what I will arrest you for, but I guarantee you I will arrest you. Wow. What year was this? The chief of police. What year was this? About five, so, 95. Wow. What a dick. The chief of police. It's not like a guy in a car. What's his name? Do you remember his name? Dick something. Hey, Dick, go fuck himself. Dick Weed, I think. Dick Weed. I don't know what is this. How am I going to remember the case? I mean, come on. What a crazy abuse of power. But it's all good now because John McCain said he would have entered MMA. Now it's okay because the war here said it's okay. McCain, I've said this before, I was sort of hoping Jerry Falwell or somebody would come out against, somebody I could take, a war hero and a powerful senator. But you know who was really a tough opponent to counter was the senator from Colorado that had had the judo champion. He'd been an Olympic judacon. He was Native American. Ben Lighthorse Campbell? Ben Nighthorse Campbell? I don't know who he is. Never heard of this before. Because we were kind of intimating that McCain didn't really know anything about the martial arts. And he went and found Ben, who was an Olympic gold medalist in judo. Or a medalist. He might not have been gold. And he said, yeah, that's no good. You can't do elbows. What are you thinking? Can't use elbows? Oh, whatever he said. Who knows? Whatever the rule. Yeah. Whatever it was he didn't like. One of the early opponents, and that was all for a lot of folks that don't know, this is where it gets weird with John McCain. John McCain's wife, their family was involved with Budweiser, right? And he was, the Budweiser was in bed with boxing and boxing was- Yeah, but Budweiser's in bed with the UFC now. Now? But they weren't in 93. Joe, I don't really think that's the connection. I don't think that's what it was. What do you think it was? I think it's odd. I mean, John McCain is a Republican, so Republicans tend to stand for state control, right? Keeping a small federal government. That's kind of a Republican policy. But I think John McCain really wanted a national boxing commission. And I think that this was a good way to promote that. And I think he just was generally offended by the UFC. And I think it was a great way to get press. And it wasn't like people were coming out and going, keep the UFC, keep the UFC. He just could beat on the UFC and get as much press as he wanted. And look how different America is now. I mean, back then, that was the biggest problem facing the US, was the UFC. I mean, now look at the problems facing America and the world. And you go, we really lived in kind of a magical time, you know, back then. Wait a minute. What do you mean the UFC was the only problem the United States had? Well, you're not reading the news in 1993? There was a lot of shit going on in the world. Like what? Well, there's always things going on overseas. There's always things going on in the United States. Had you heard of Osama Bin Laden in 1993? Okay. In that sense, no. Afghanistan, that was a Russian problem. Yeah. That was the Mujahideen back then. Yeah. They were fighting the Russians, so they were cool with us. Yeah. The Clinton years, the economy was good. I mean, he got, you know, he diddled the intern. I mean, that was like the biggest thing. Or she diddled them or something happened. Whatever. I wasn't paying attention. Yeah, that was the biggest issue. Well, I'm sure that what I was going to say, I mean, what I mean is there was certainly other problems in the world. There's violence and all sorts of things in our... Not if you were reading the media, apparently. You know, it was... Was it really that big of a deal? Maybe it was you because you were really close to it too. You know, I'll tell you what, for me, it was, you know, it was riding the tiger, right? Because it was great to be in Mad Magazine. It was great to be the final episode of Friends when Courtney Cox's boyfriend enters the UFC and goes to it. Yeah, that's right. It was great to be in Virtuosity, you know, the Denzel Washington Russell Crowe movie. I mean, there's big, 95. I mean, it's really big media stuff. But on the other hand, when you're that visible, you know, you're making a lot of people angry. If they don't like you, you're in their face all the time. So it was kind of a tough thing. So yeah, I mean, it was fun until it wasn't. And you know the story. We were... We had backed off that marketing and where, you know, the unified rules, you know, were coming into place and, you know, it was a very different story. Well, for a lot of folks who don't know what we're talking about, when the UFC first came out, there were no weight classes and there were no rules. And you could not, you know, a fighter could tap, but no one could throw in the towel and the referee couldn't stop the fight. That was on one. That changed by two. That was insane, by the way. That was insane. Okay, so this sort of highlights it. So that's the first episode, the first UFC. And then from there, slowly but surely, rules started becoming implemented, strategies changed, rounds, weight classes, gloves. Things got really interesting really fast. I think a lot of people were unaware of it. If you think about the difference between 93 and 97, I came in in 97 when Vitor made his debut. Gloves were still not mandatory. They were optional. Some fighters fought without gloves. But it was... Wasn't that the case? Yeah, I was against gloves. After I saw Tank knock out, what's his name, Mantua? Tank was smart. He figured out he goes, gloves are a weapon. I'm bringing them. Yeah, you could hit harder with gloves. A lot harder. You could hit harder. Don't worry about breaking your hands. All the wraps and everything, they give you a much better thing to hit with. Bare knuckles, tricky. If you hit someone with bare knuckles in your forehead, you can break your hand very easily. It's really common, especially if you catch them with the last two knuckles, the ones that'll bite where your pinky is. That was the most common injury in the early days. You know, in the Gracies, they were like, wear gloves, don't wear gloves, wear a hat, I don't care. Yeah. Whatever you want. Wear a vest, we don't care. If someone else is wearing gloves and you're grappling with them, you actually can hold onto the gloves. I mean, if there's no rules about it. Guys use the gloves to finish submissions now, too. They started doing a lot of that. A lot of guys, the way Josh Thompson finished off, who was it? Ryan Pat Healy? The thing was Pat Healy. No, not Pat Healy. Yeah. I think it was Josh Thompson and Pat Healy. Anyway, he grabs the glove as he's finishing the rear naked choke. He's going for the rear naked and he switches to palm to palm, and then he grabs the glove and uses the glove to finish it off. Why not? I was like, that's slick. Well, it's totally legal. It's totally legal to grab your own glove, and it's also totally legal to grab your own shorts, which is kind of interesting, because one of the best ways to defend against Kimura's is to just grab the inside of your shorts by your crotch and just hang on for dear life. I mean, the Gracie's always used the gee for that type of effect. You know, I'm sitting here, I'm watching you do this, and I was watching your brain try to find that opponent, and you're a renaissance man of tough guy stuff. You know, that's what you are. Because your comedy is like that. You've acted as a tough guy. You do comedy from a tough guy point of view. And you know, I think you've probably...is this true? I think you've probably seen more MMA than anyone on the planet up close. Maybe Joe Silva's seen more than me. But he closes his eyes. I've seen him. He's over there. He's got his hands over his eyes. It was Pat Healy who it was, definitely Pat Healy that Josh Thompson fought. Yeah, man, look, I've seen a lot. Up close, I've been to, I don't know how many events, but I've seen well over 1,000 fights up close and personal, and some of the best fights in the history of MMA. In history. But Joe Silva goes to all the Fox Sports 1 events as well now. Over the last two years, he's outpaced me. It used to be we would all see the same amount of fights. But over the last two years, I don't really do those Fox Sports 1 ones as much anymore. I do Fox and the pay-per-view, and then the Anik Florian team does the other one. But, so Joe Silva might be the only guy on the planet that's seen more fights than me. Unless, you know, really hardcore fans. There's some fucking psychos out there. I've seen everything, every local show. I don't know. I think Joe fits into that category. Oh, he's a psycho. Joe Silva is a real MMA fan. That motherfucker loves MMA. Yeah, here it is. This is Josh Thompson finishing off Pat Healy. What a beautiful technique, too. He's got the body triangle, and then he's using. It's hard to tell here. Nope, that's palm to palm. I'm wrong. That's just a regular palm to palm grip. I stand corrected unless he finishes it in a different way and pulls the gloves. I definitely have seen someone do it before. I don't know why. I thought it was Josh because Josh is a very clever guy. The point stands. It's a good move. There's a fucking badass technique, though. Let me see. No, I couldn't tell if he did it there. Is that John? Yeah, it's John McCarthy. No, no, he's wearing a microphone, you fuck. Jesus Christ. It's like as he's finishing this off with the body. That's another thing, too, that's changed over the years, that body triangle, man. Guys. Oh, yeah, he is doing it. He is doing it. He was doing it at the end. See, my memory is good. I thought my memory failed me. Josh Thompson is a bad motherfucker. Good jujitsu. So much of the fighting has changed. Yeah, it's incredible, right? It's really incredible. It's like even when you see old films of the NFL back in the leather helmet, football in the leather helmet days, football hasn't... UFC changed more in the 20 years. It's remarkable. But yet you and Joe Silva are still there. Yeah, that's weird. Yeah, it changed radically. And I brought both you guys in. You did? Yeah. You did. Well, I was the post-fight interviewer. I'd never done any commentary ever. I had done commentary for Muay Thai, but I'd never done... You were a professional talker. Well, yeah, but still, you have to learn how to do it. Absolutely. And you got a lot better, right? Oh, for sure. I was terrible in the beginning. It's... But you were better in the beginning than the people that we brought in on that first show. Yeah, maybe. You were a serious upgrade. I had the benefit of, first of all, watching them make mistakes. That's a huge benefit. True enough. And then the other benefit was I was a huge fan and always have been. I've been a fan since that tape that I picked up at that Hollywood video store. And that was two? That was the first one you saw? That was number two, yeah. And then I started training... That was a good joke. Fuck yeah, it was. I started training soon after that, and I remember thinking, man, this is... I hope this works out. I hope this takes off, because... I remember when I looked at the very box that had the UFC on it, the first time I found out about the UFC, I looked at that box and went, wow, they did it. They did it. Because this is something that everybody in MMA had talked about, or I should say MMA, everyone in martial arts. There are no martial arts anymore. There's styles, but everything is essentially, in my eyes, MMA is martial arts now. It's not this idea of mixed- Well, in your world. In your world, yeah. I mean, I think they're still teaching kids Tae Kwon Do. Sure, and there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with it. There is nothing, no. But martial arts is MMA. It is martial arts. When we were coming up, I was a Tae Kwon Do guy, and I had friends that did karate, and I had another friend that did this, and everyone always wanted to know what was the best. And you didn't know. You really had no idea. You had no idea until the UFC came along. It was all just speculation, and everyone was convinced that their style of judo was unstoppable, or their shoto con was the best death touch. Whatever it was, it was all just shit-talking and guesswork. When I looked at that box, I remember very clearly thinking in my head, wow, they fucking did it. They actually did it. This was the thing that everybody always talked about. Get everybody together, make them duke it out, kumite style, like a fucking Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. In a cage. But even better, because he was in a cage. Big act of gun. Two, when I would tell people, when I was working for you guys, I was on News Radio, which is an NBC sitcom. Fortunately, News Radio was not doing well, and it wasn't popular, so the network didn't come up to me and go, hey, fuckhead, what are you doing cage fighting a commentator for? The advertisers are very uncomfortable with your sidekick. They didn't have any problem, because that show could have been canceled every year. It almost got canceled. That was a good show, Joe. It was a very good show. It was a very good show. It was a very good character. But we didn't have the benefit of political backing, so we got moved a lot. And it was never like a guarantee. But when I was doing it, people would talk to me like I was doing porn. They would talk to me like I was off shooting porn on the weekend. They're like, what are you doing? Are you doing cage fighting? Why are you doing that? Why are you interviewing cage fighters? I was like, I like watching it. And people would look at you like there's something wrong with you for liking. Because I like watching it. Dude, I'm telling you, man, I got seriously judged by people in the industry, back then, when it was not popular at all. I commiserate. And when I moved to Larchmont, which is a snooty little town in Westchester, outside of New York, my wife goes, please don't tell anyone what you do. You know, the USC had paid for the house. But she goes, please don't, please, if you could not bring it up. Yeah. It's much, much, much, much, much more acceptable now. I mean, no, absolutely. It's on Fox. It's rumored to be an Olympics board in the making, so... Well, that would make sense. But, you know, if you have curling as an Olympic sport, I think you gotta allow MMA in. Don't knock, that's my people. Your people, you Canadian? Well, Scottish, which is... Oh, the Scottish curl as well, right? Well, they invented curling. And the Canadians are Scottish because, you know, that drink Canada dry, the Scots thought that was a challenge. So they all went to drink Canada dry, you know, that's an old whiskey joke, I'm sorry. The three Scottish listeners you have are busting a gut right now. I love the Canada dry material. I was on one of those shows, like Best Damn Sports Show or something like that, way, way, way back in the day. And I was telling them, I said, I think it's gonna be an enormous national sport one day. And they were laughing. They thought it was hilarious. You know, look, there's a lot of stick and ball guys in the sports business that still are waiting for it to go away. Like, they don't like rock and roll or hip hop either. Well, there was some shithead who does amateur football, he does college football. And he was talking about after Anderson Silva broke his leg, that this is the reason why he would never cover the UFC, never has, never will. You know, and MMA fans got really offended. I'm sure. What was the reason? Because Anderson broke his leg. Because his leg got broke. Exactly. And I'm like, he's a fucking football guy. Yeah. Not only that, he's college football. They don't even make money. They're getting head injuries for free. And the colleges are making billions of dollars. Well, there are no rules guys not commenting on other sports, Joe. I'm not doing that. The no rules guy. Well, those guys, those fucking higher moral ground sports guys, they're ridiculous. But there's a real reason for it. And if you look at the NFL, with NFL films that turned the sport into a heroic endeavor, and I think NFL films was really changing in the media business and in the sports business, because they turned football into this epic story. And it became very advertiser friendly. And it ends up in the Super Bowl, which is the most advertiser friendly thing on the planet. Right? So I think that whole thing was built out and anything that rocks the boat, the way we rocked the boat with boxing when Tyson was moved from pay-per-view to Fox opposite the ultimate ultimate back in the day, there hadn't been a heavyweight boxing match on broadcast in, I think, 16 years. And strangely, Tyson has put up against our tournament of champions. That's not a coincidence. So I think when you're protecting something, it's a siege mentality. And I think a lot of the pure sports guys still feel a little bit threatened by the UFC. Well, you better tell Dana White because Dana White will put shows on. Well, he used to always do that. Put spike shows on opposite of affliction or opposite. Dana. He likes to go to war. I am the number one Dana fan, I gotta say. He's the greatest. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be working for the UFC this time around. No. None of us would be sitting here talking about the UFC if it wasn't for him. Well, I had no intentions of going back and doing commentary. I was totally talked into it by him. I was watching the fights like Cage Side. That's back when Goldberg and... Who else was doing it with him? Jeff from Hook and Shoot. Jeff Osborne and Blatnik. They were doing it. That was 2001 or 2002. Yeah, 2000, 2001. Yeah, so I was just watching. Look, Dana got it the way I got it, the way you got it instantly, and then was in. And then you're in. And you're a Mormon. You're gonna have four wives or whatever. Wear the special underwear. Whatever it is, you are in. Yeah, the UFC has that effect.