Joe Rogan Offers to Commentate UFC Kickboxing Event

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Joe Rogan wants Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) to start its own kickboxing promotion.

Rogan is a long-time fan of all martial arts, having started as a kick-centric Tae Kwon Do fighter. So, it’s unsurprising that he sees kickboxing and Muay Thai as an untapped opportunity UFC could jump on. He’s been bugging Dana White about the idea since 2011 … and continues to this day.

He explained his reasoning in a new episode of The Joe Rogan Experience with combat jiu-jitsu founder, Eddie Bravo.
“Everybody loves stand-up,” he said. “When you’re watching MMA, sometimes fighters clinch and people go, ‘Oooh.’ They want to see wars. These are the crazy wars all the time, that’s the fight, crazy wars. Like, how is that not big?

“I brought it up with Dana and I said, ‘Dude I know you guys are into the slap fight thing, but I think the thing that’s untapped is kickboxing,” Rogan continued. “And he was like, ‘Ah, but nobody would like that, that PKA Karate thing.’ That was like in the 80s. They literally used the call it ‘The Kick of the 80s.’ Remember?”

There’s the legendary K-1 promotion, which has done massive numbers internationally, and Glory Kickboxing, which took the mantle of biggest kickboxing promotion for several years.
“[K-1] didn’t ever reach the heights that it was capable of reaching,” Rogan admitted. “It could have with Glory. Glory was very high level and they tried for awhile. Put the UFC machine behind it. If they put the UFC promotional machine behind high level kickboxing and said, ‘Hey we’re going to sign the biggest fighters in the world, we’re going to have UFC kickboxing.’

“UFC should hire Michael Schiavello and do a f—ing muay thai card,” he said. “Dana, I’ll commentate. You heard me. I’ll f—ing commentate it. Let’s go.”
Unfortunately for Rogan, White has never been interested in kickboxing and suggested it was never going to be a “thing” like mixed martial arts (MMA) had become. But, Rogan believes that’s an opinion based on outdated information.

“Dana is a fan of whatever works,” Rogan said. “He’s a fan of fights. Just for whatever reason, he thinks kickboxing never caught on in America. And I think it’s because of that PKA s— they had in the 1980s. But, dudes were wearing long pants, they couldn’t kick the leg. It’s a different sport, man.

“If you look at the fights in ONE FC and you look at the classic K-1 kickboxing fights, my God how is that not fighting?” Rogan concluded. “It’s so exciting. And if they had them fight with the little gloves on like ONE FC does? If Dana decided to get behind that? God, it’d be huge.

“Muay Thai,” he said with a big grin. “UFC Muay Thai.”

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Why doesn’t Rogan round up a few interested parties and start up a kickboxing/muay thai promotion? It’s not like he doesn’t have the money or the connections. Start it small, you could do it like the Looking For a Fight series where Joe and company go watch fighters and sign guys…or have some of those guys then transition to a contenders/fight night cards and scale up. You could have all of it on Fight pass…

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I saw that fight and they weren’t lying… It was insane

Watching that JRE episode made me go watch the fight

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I love what ONE is doing, Im in.

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Yeah One FC is the real deal. Like Pride 2.0

I like watching Demetrius Johnson in there. They be hooking him up with the good fights. His skills really shine there. Way more exciting.

UFC has bad rules. Favors point fighting, stalling, and eye poking.

I’m going to start watching more of One FC to get familiar with all the fighters.

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If they put together a striking only org and had events with boxing and kickboxing mixed in, that’d be pretty cool. I honestly wouldn’t mind seeing some UFC guys fight under different rules.

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No thanks Joe.

I don’t need to see Dana’s cheap boys play Muay Thai while you scream on the mic.

I get the real deal every week for free from ONE.

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Joes right.

But i think dana might be oncerned that ufc muay thai, would eventually be more popular than the ufc

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Oh God no.

If anything they need JWP. He knows all about caged muay thai.

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john wayne stagecoach GIF by FilmStruck

That would be a good call.

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UFC Letwei pls

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Bumppp

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Yeah, that’s probably it. The last thing he would want is another billion dollar business :laughing:.

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