Joe Rogan's Approach to Post Fight Interviews

I always wanted to ask you one thing. It's completely different subject. Can I ask you this one? Sure. That's not what I want. When you're doing interviews at the end of fights, did you ever feel threatened somehow? No. Like at least once. No, no, no, no. One thing that I hope the fighters realize is that what I'm trying to do is only get them to express themselves. I want them to shine. I really genuinely want them. They won this big fight. I want them to express themselves. I want them to maybe maximize their marketing, their marketability, and just tell the world how they feel. That's an incredibly unusual experience to win a big fight in the cage on pay-per-view in front of millions of people. My goal is only to try to get them to communicate better and to let them know that I'm there to support them. That's all I'm ever trying to do. Perfect. You know? Yeah. Like I was saying before we started talking, I have a lot of friends in MMA. Sweetest guys. Sweetest people. You consider what they do for a living. It's crazy. So crazy. Damn young Vunderley. Ninja Shogun. How is Ninja doing these days? Man, last time I talked to him, he got some... I don't know if it was because of the fighting. I cannot say that. But his speech is a little slow. It is already hard to understand. Even Shogun, they have this what they call the huanese, which is the way of speaking. They come from a state which is very hard to understand what they say. They're from Curitiba, right? Yeah, Curitiba. And people who are from Curitiba sometimes, when they speak too fast, you don't understand that much. But I think he got some injuries and got some scars in his head. I think he got some surgeries. Yeah. I think he had surgery in his head. He was fine. At the time, people were kicking people in the head. Oh, soccer kicking. Soccer kicking, bro. And he was one of the best. He was good. Yeah, he was an animal. He was really young too. And at the end, he was getting knocked out with slaps. Yeah, that's the scariest thing is when you see their chin go. Mm-hmm. When their ability to take apart... What's crazy is Shogun seems to be making a resurgence. It's crazy. He... Amazing. He... I used to be very good friends with one of his coaches. And after the fight with Henderson, the first one, which was like a ball. Crazy fight. That was a chaos. And I was talking to him and he was like, you don't even imagine how talented this guy is. But he got a focus. If he was focused, he would kick his ass in like fucking two minutes. So he just... That's the way they do it in the shoochee box. They like to fight. They like to fucking just go at it. Yeah. Him and Cyborg and Vendelé and Anderson. They're sort of the same thing. But the way they do it, it's just like, let's go to war. Yeah. And sometimes the game changed. Yeah. But Shogun is like learning. You can see that he's like improving, still improving. And like, I think it was like 36. Well, his last fight, he looked sensational. I mean, he looked like a fucking killer too. It's crazy. He can take a shot again now? It's weird. It's like, I mean, he got knocked out by a few different guys. And he's lost some fights, some tough fights. But his last fight, he looked as good as he's looked in years. It's sad for me when I see like, I don't know why. It's always with Brazilians, but when I see like an old fighter getting his ass kicked too quick. I remember his fight with Sonnen. That was... Yeah. Well, he got caught in a guillotine. He got caught in a guillotine, but it's fast. The guy trained for like six months and that's very frustrating. Remember when Royce went back to fight with Hughes? That was like... Yeah. Well, Matt Hughes was in his prime then, you know, and he was so strong and Hoist just wasn't... He wasn't physically capable. He couldn't do it, right? He didn't look the same, you know, he just didn't look like he was physically capable the same way. And, you know, Matt Hughes is fucking talented. Unbelievably talented. When he got on top of Hoist and he was smashing him, I was like, oh, yeah, it's hard to watch. It's hard to watch. Yeah. But that's the life. I mean, that is the life they chose. You know, when Chuck Liddell just got knocked out by T to Ortiz, that was hard to watch because you could tell he just can't take a punch anymore. I wasn't that fight that went there to watch it. He was bad. He wasn't... He wasn't moving right either. The thing about when fighters take a lot of knockout losses, one of the things that's very... becomes apparent is their balance looks off and their movement doesn't look the same. Like their neurology, their body doesn't move the same way. It's not the same way. Yeah. It can look the same, but it doesn't react the same, right? Right. I mean, even Anderson, when he lost to Stylebender, I think Stylebender would have been a tough fight for him at any point in his career because Stylebender is just fantastic, super technical. But Anderson looked like he was a step behind the Anderson of old, like the Anderson that knocked out Vitor or the Anderson that, you know, you go back to the early days, the Anderson that knocked out Chelsunnin. And that Anderson was a fucking... He was just an assassin. Yeah. He was so good. He just knew what to do and when to do it. And when the Stylebender fight, he just looked like he was a little off. A little off, yeah. But he's also 46, I think. You know, he's... I think he's one year older than me. 43. He's only 43. Yeah. We did a show together. We do a show, this show on Netflix called Ultimate Beastmaster, which is... Brazilian Netflix? No, it's here as well. Terry Crews did an American... We do like all hosts from different countries and we meet... And it's like American-Nesha Warrior for Netflix. Oh, okay. And we have like hosts from different countries and we have the Brazilians and Italians and the French guys and I did this show with Anderson. He's a sweet guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. I mean, he's one of the all-time greats. I mean, I had the honor of calling a lot of his fights. And it's crazy because... Yeah, and it's crazy when you're talking about the guy is getting older. I remember I talked with Minotaro. It was like three or four. It was like two fights after he actually retired and I asked him, why you keep doing it? You don't have to. You don't have to prove anything to no one. And what he said to me, I think was so fair. He was like, I fought when this thing wasn't giving me any money. Right. So just give... Let me lose the fight or two. And get some money at the end of my career because I deserve that. Right. He wasn't like, of course he was going there to win, but it's like, I want to take the risk. Yeah. Because I was fighting in Japan getting, I don't know, $5,000. And now that the game is like bringing you so much money, I'm going to retire. Let me just do a couple more. Well, Minotaro, not only was he a pioneer and one of the great MMA heavyweights of all time, but he's so important for MMA because he showed that heavyweights can fight off their back and that heavyweights could win by triangle. Like when he triangleed Mark Coleman and was tapping guys with arm bars when he beat Bob Sapp. Yeah, that was huge. The Bob Sapp one is fucking crazy. That is one of the greatest MMA fights in the history of the sport. 375 pound Bob Sapp. Minotaro only probably weighed 230 and he wound up tapping him with an arm bar. It was fucking crazy. And after he get spiked on his head, which still apparently fucks with him to his day, his neck was fucked up permanently. Because of that? Yes. I didn't know that. 375 pound guy who doesn't even look like a human. He looked like a comic book. He smashes him on his head and Minotaro recovered. And I mean, he was one of the toughest guys of all time. Yeah, but he was run by a truck when he was a little kid. That's that scar on the side. Run by a truck. Crazy. Yeah, that's crazy. I mean, he's one of the most important figures in the history of the sport. And then I think Fabrizio took it to another level. Because Fabrizio Verdume probably has the best guard in the history of the sport. It's history of the heavyweight division. I mean, when he caught Fedor, when he had him in his triangle, when he had him locked up like that, you don't get away with that guy. Like you might get out of some people's guard, not Fabrizio. That motherfucker locks people up. And I gotta thank him. I'm here just because of him. Yeah. Help me with that. Well, my respect for him, you know, when he reached out to me, he was like, okay, I'll get your friend on. 100%. Thank you, brother. And he's a great guy. And that's why I asked you if you kind of feel threatened. Because when people get, they're in a fight. You don't know what is going to happen. And when you go over there to talk with one, you can say the wrong thing at the wrong, I don't know. Or maybe you can make mistakes for sure. But my intention is always to just make them look good. That's all I'm trying to do. All I'm trying to do is just get them to express themselves. And also put some emotion to how great their performance was. Perfect. Perfect. Yeah. But it's a weird job, you know, to also be a comedian. You know, it's a strange combination of things. Combination, too. Yeah. Do they go watch you sometimes? Sometimes, yeah. Yeah. That's good. That's good, man. That's very good.