Why Wrestler Jordan Burroughs Hasn't Transitioned Into MMA

The J.Rogan experience. First of all, I think it's amazing that no one's talked you into doing MMA. It's incredible. I've been close. How close? Mostly the lady outside, my wife Lauren. Really? Is the one that's talked me out of it. Really? Yeah, bro. Like when I graduated from college in 2011, University of Nebraska, wrestling was still on the brink of, if it was in its infancy of marketing and branding and really making it a professional career. So MMA was the new kid on the block and it was growing and expanding. And we had a lot of our guys transitioning in. Henry Sahudo, Ben Askren, Daniel Cormier. And so I really thought about it. I was like, okay, I'm going to wrestle in the Olympics in London 2012, win the gold, and then I'm going to make the transition to MMA. I'll be 25 years old. I'll have plenty of time. And then I met Lauren and she's like, listen, you're doing well in the sport. Stay here. You're comfortable. This is a different, it's a different sport. MMA in comparison to wrestling, but it's a good thing. It is a different sport and it also has a lot more head trauma and there's a lot of things to consider. 100%. That's what I think about all the time. I listen, I think about going to MMA until I see a guy like Platinum Mike Perry get his whole thing split, nose crooked. I'm like, eh, I'm good. It's like in wrestling, you lose, you get taken down, pushed out, you know, you get pinned and fighting, you lose, you get something broken, choked out, tap, you know, it's unconscious. It's a very, very different sport. Wrestling, it's much, it's a, you score as many points as possible with doing the least damage as possible. And in MMA, I feel like it's different. It's a shame that there's not more attention put on the professional, like, like at one point in time, professional wrestling was actual wrestling. Yeah. It wasn't like WWE entertainment. It was professional wrestling and it was done for, why can't they do that? I know they tried to do that a few years back. There was an organization, I think, was it Kevin Jackson that was doing it? Yeah. Yeah. He was doing something where he was doing a professional wrestling organization, but it just didn't catch on for some reason. But yet golf is on TV for sure. Baseball and all these things that are bags, bro. Cornhole. I was watching the cornhole championships on ESPN the other day. I'm like, bro, this is wild. Like cornhole is on ESPN more often than wrestling. But isn't that just now because there's no crowds and COVID and there's all the weirdness and there's a lot of shit that's on. Like if you follow SportsCenter on Instagram, like half the shit they do is like people in their backyard, like doing crazy dunks and stuff. I think the, the invention of the internet has definitely changed the game for our sport. We are in an epic time where anyone can be famous. All you need is an iPhone, cell phone period. If you can film footage and upload it and it's funny, it's inventive, it's disruptive, you have an audience and people are going to follow it. So people that are going viral now and becoming superstars aren't even the most particularly talented people in society. They just have a niche and they know how to stay consistent with it. Well, sometimes it doesn't even make sense. Everyone just catches, like remember that dude that was on the skateboard doing Fleetwood Mac? With the cranberry juice. Yeah. Like just for whatever reason, everybody's like, that guy looks like he's having fun. Get this man a truck, get him more cranberry juice. And now he's on, I look, he's always on podcasts. He's all over the place. He's a man. He bought a house. He bought a car. I mean, it's really incredible. That's the beauty of it. Yeah. That's the beauty of it is it gives people an opportunity. There it is right there. Yeah. So it was, it was professional wrestling league that they established and you know, when people reference what we do, I call it Olympic wrestling. Honestly, I don't even call it professional wrestling because that is kind of an O to the WWE and old time WWF. So it's a, it's a unique thing that we had at this time. This is Tommy Roland's Daniel Cormier, both extremely competitive, both great wrestlers, Oklahoma State, Ohio state. This probably was round 0, 4, 5 ish. So I was still in high school, real pro wrestling. That's right. Different cities across the country that had their own teams. It was almost like XFL esque. It kind of had that vibe and you guys rule on Gardner. Yeah. Real on Gardner and who's the Tim Johnson in the middle. He works for the big 10 network and also for ESPN. He does commentary for the NCAA championships yearly. And then the last guy is Nate Carr, who was a NCAA champ, world medalist. And Rulon is another guy that made the transition. He made the transition to MMA. Did he? Yeah. Yeah. He fought a bunch of times over in Japan and actually I think what stopped him was he lost a toe in a frostbite accident. He's a former Cornhusker. He went to the same university and I got a chance to kind of spend some time with Rulon, but he was out when I was kind of transitioning in. And so he's an interesting cat and he is one of those guys that's like shrouded in this mystery, but there's so many like epic stories about who he was, what he's done, how much he's eaten. He's a gorilla, dude. Massive man. In real life, you see the size of that guy? Massive man. And then obviously him beating Corellon, which is pretty much considered the most legendary victory in wrestling history. That's a weird victory, right? Because it's like Corellon, all he did was get Corellon to break his grip. And it was a new rule, right? The rules are evolving all the time in wrestling. So it's one of those rule changes that year in particular, which wasn't, it didn't translate well to the average fan. So like the toughest thing about wrestling is that the rules change so often that a non-traditional wrestling fan can't really keep up. You watch a football game, you know, listen, you put the ball into the end zone, it's six points, extra point, a point, field goal, three points, right? Safety two, you watch basketball, you know, if you're behind this arc, it's three points. If you're within it, it's two points. In wrestling, there's so many different subjective rule sets that you're like, okay, well, if you unlock your hands here, or if this guy gets pushed out of bounds, it's a point. But if you shove them out of bounds, it's no points. If he's grounded, it's no points. But if his knees off the mat, then it's a point. So there's so many different like little nuances in the sport that make it difficult to follow. And even if you're within it, like sometimes you have to address what the rule set is before you even compete in a tournament. There are times where we're meeting with administration and referees before we compete at the Olympics World Championships, just so we can stay current on the rule set for that year, because it's just that much. It's always evolving, always evolving. Is that something that plays in your head while you're actually competing? Do you have to think like, oh, wait a minute, what is what's the rule for this place? You know, that's a good question. I think in the heat of the moment, sometimes I imagine you've seen it a lot in MMA, whether it's a guy, you know, hitting someone in the back of the head, or, you know, kicking them when they're down on a knee, like all these little things that when you're in the battle, and you're fired up, and you're trying to put this man out, like you don't even think about the rule set, you're just, you know, it has to be programmed. I think experience just multiple times within this position, there's a certain level of savviness and mental toughness that you have to have to get there. Catch new episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience for free only on Spotify. Watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify, including clips easily, seamlessly switch between video and audio experience on Spotify. You can listen to the JRE in the background while using other apps and can download episodes to save on data costs all for free. Spotify is absolutely free. You don't have to have a premium account to watch new JRE episodes. You just need to search for the JRE on your Spotify app. Go to Spotify now to get this full episode of the Joe Rogan Experience.