Joe Rogan phoned into the Opie & Anthony radio show yesterday to give his thoughts on the events of last weekend’s UFC 167.
During the interview, the long-time UFC color commentator, followed Dana White’s lead by openly criticizing the Nevada State Athletic Commission due to the poor standard of their judging in major fights like Georges St.Pierre Vs Johny Hendricks.
“The Nevada State Athletic Commission f*ckin’ sucks,” Rogan stated bluntly. “They’re terrible. They’ve done nothing to change. They have a real issue with their judges, and a lot of the issue is that these people have no martial arts experience whatsoever. They’re boxing judges that they’ve sort of trained in MMA. It’s the same issue with the referees.”
Moving on to talk of St.Pierre possibly retiring, Rogan gave a different opinion to Dana White, stating his belief that it was time for the 32 year-old to hang up his gloves.
“I think Georges should retire,” Rogan said. “One of the reasons I think Georges should retire is he was on my podcast and he was talking about being abducted by aliens. I was going, ‘you think you’ve been abducted by aliens?’ He starts talking about missing time. He started talking about driving his car and all of a sudden he’s at home and he has no idea how he got there.
“I think it’s head kicks. [At UFC 167] he had some serious memory loss. I think he’s taken too many shots. An interesting statistic is that Georges has taken more punches and kicks in the last three fights than any of his fights, ever. In fact, 50% of the shots he’s taken his entire career were in the last three fights. I think he should get out. I know the UFC probably doesn’t want to hear me say that. I know that could be a huge rematch.”
Rogan also indicated that he strongly believed that Hendricks won that fight – so much so that he actually thinks the UFC should just hand him the belt.
Interesting opinions from Rogan here. It’ll probably be hard to find too many people who disagree with him on the NSAC situation, but his thoughts on GSP are more controversial.
While it’s true he’s suffered some tough fights recently, the statistics are skewed here since in his bouts prior to that he’d done a good job of not taking much damage at all, particularly through his effective use of wrestling which had allowed him to control many of his opponents for long periods on the mat.
GSP’s still only 32 years-old, is in great shape athletically, has only lost twice in his career and never been KO’d so it seems like an over-reaction to suggest he’s a candidate for retirement.
If Rogan had purely been arguing on the grounds that GSP had already achieved everything he could possibly wish for in the sport and had earned enough over the course of his career to happily retire without worrying about money then that would have been harder to argue against.
Check out the full interview with Rogan below.
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