Joe Rogan is often called the voice of the UFC, a color commentator who has been around long before Dana White reshaped the promotion. But what if things had gone differently? Instead of calling the action cageside, Rogan could have been one of the very first men actually to compete inside it.

Even before his commentary and comedy career took off, Rogan was an exceptional martial artist who mastered taekwondo in his teens. However, with time, he understood that the craft was not for him. “I stopped fighting when I was 22,” Rogan said on his podcast.

He started doing comedic skits when he was 21, but despite that, he still trained and fought multiple times. However, some serious events made him commit to staying out of fighting forever: “One of them was recognizing brain damage.”

“I started doing boxing and kickboxing, and I saw so much brain damage. I saw so much unreported brain damage. Just weird stuff. Guys would tell you the same story they just told you five minutes ago. They just tell it to you again," he said on the Joe Rogan Experience.

With modern research, it's become clear that brain damage and CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) are far more common in combat sports than people thought just a few decades ago.

In fact, Former UFC Featherweight champion Wanderlei Silva has now confessed about struggling with the symptoms: "I fear that during my career I have suffered traumatic brain injury (TBI) and am noticing symptoms common with TBI and CTE including depression, mood swings, and irritability," he said in 2024.

However, there was another incident that's etched in Rogan's memory that truly halted his combat sports ambitions.

Joe Rogan Nearly Wrecked Someone to Smithereens

Back when he was competing, Rogan revealed that in one of his fights, he nearly hurt his opponent so badly that he had to be pulled out of the venue on a stretcher, which served as a wake-up call for him.

“There was a guy that I hurt really bad in a tournament... I knocked this one guy out when I was 19 in California. I was competing in the nationals. I [knocked out] this guy and he never got up," explained Rogan.

“They had to take him on a stretcher, and he was on a stretcher for half an hour, and they took him to the hospital, and it freaked me out. Because I was like that could have easily been me,” the podcast host added.

Rogan realized that sooner or later, the same fate awaited him, which is why he stepped away before going too deep into martial arts.

That said, Joe Rogan still trains to this day and engages in martial arts, but he keeps a safe distance from competing.

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Written by

Suryakant Das

Edited by

Sagnik Bagchi