Ryan Baldi
Joe Rogan has revealed he made a plea to the owners of the UFC for a rule change that would have made the sport safer for fighters, but his request fell on deaf ears.
The stand-up comedian has been working with the UFC since 1997, first featuring as a ringside and backstage reporter before later transitioning into a colour commentator role that he continues to occupy to this day.
Rogan has long been a staunch advocate of the sport and of its relative safety in comparison to other combat sports such as boxing.
But in one recent episode of his hugely popular podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience, the 57-year-old discussed with his guest UFC lightweight Jiri Prochazka how he pleaded with super-agent and CEO of the fight company's ownership group, Endeavour, to eliminate the practice of weight cutting when they purchased the promotion back in 2016.
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“I think weight-cutting should be eliminated,” Joe Rogan said. “I said this to Ari Emanuel when they first bought the UFC.
"I said, ‘Listen man, you know what you should do? Get rid of weight-cutting, just stop it. Look, If you can randomly test people for drugs, you can randomly test their weight. Show up with a scale, say. ‘Hey, buddy. Step on the scale, you’re 190 pounds, how the f*ck are you making 145?’ Do something like that.
“And come up with more weight classes. There should be a weight class every 10 pounds.
"This idea of these giant gaps like 185 to 205, that’s a 20-pound gap, that’s huge, that doesn’t exist in boxing.
"They should have every 10 pounds, 85, 95, 205, 225 and then unlimited… Find out what does Islam Makhachev weigh. Islam Makhachev is a UFC champion, the best pound-for-pound fighter on Earth. Find out what he weighs.
"What do you weigh if you were healthy? If weight cutting didn’t exist? Would it be 185, 190? Whatever that is. That’s how you fight now and we’re not going to weigh you in the day before and let you rehydrate. That’s crazy talk. Fight people your size.”