Joe Rogan has been doing post-fight interviews with UFC fighters for over two decades. While he is beloved by fans, he has gotten his fair share of criticism during this time. One of the most common criticisms levied against him has been for his decision to interview fighters who had been knocked out minutes earlier when their brains and cognitive capacities were not firing on all cylinders.

Some notable examples of this have been his UFC 214 post-fight interview with Daniel Cormier after the latter lost to Jon Jones, or him talking to Alistair Overeem after ‘Ubereem’ was knocked out by Stipe Miocic at UFC 203. Fans will also remember Rogan being called over by Conor McGregor after he broke his leg in his UFC 264 clash against Dustin Poirier.

Despite his better judgment, Rogan obliged, which led to McGregor’s infamous “Your wife’s in my DMs” dig at Poirier. And former UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya told comedian Theo Von how this criticism affected Rogan.

Joe Rogan stops interviewing KO’ed fighters after criticism

Israel Adesanya made an appearance on Theo Von’s ‘This Past Weekend’ podcast, where the duo talked about a variety of topics, including the brain damage fighters are subject to. Adesanya told Von that he was firmly in the “hit and don’t get hit” camp so he could “preserve noggin” and prevent brain damage “so I can keep doing this.” 

This led Von to remark that he found it strange that sometimes reporters would interview fighters who were still concussed. “Yeah, bro, it is kind of crazy, like reporters will totally look over that a guy can’t even speak just to be like, Hey, how do you feel about this next fight?” the comedian said.

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Adesanya agreed and pointed out that it was precisely this criticism that led Joe Rogan to stop interviewing fighters who have been knocked out, pointing to the commentator’s post-fight interview with Alistair Overeem, who had been knocked out by Miocic minutes earlier.

“I mean, that’s why Joe [Rogan] shouted out to him; he stopped interviewing guys after they’d been knocked; I think it was after the Alistair Overeem [vs. Stipe Miocic] fight. And there’s a famous meme of Overeem saying, ‘I clearly felt a tap ‘cuz he had Stipe in a guillotine and he thought he tapped. But again, he just got rocked, so you know your brain is not really all there. I’ve been knocked out before, like, a cold shout out to Pereira,” ‘Izzy’ added.

What do you think about Adesanya’s comments?

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