The story of how Joe Rogan started commentating for the UFC, as Dana White tells it, goes something like this. He saw Rogan on TV defending the UFC in the early 2000s when the sport was considered a savage bloodsport, akin to ‘human cockfighting.’ So impressed was the UFC CEO with Rogan that he immediately got in touch with him and offered him a job commentating for his favorite combat sports league.

This is the story that Rogan repeated in a recent interview with Fox News host Brian Kilmeade, who started his broadcasting career in the UFC around the same time as Rogan. However, his claims have been contested by one of the creators and driving forces behind the original UFC in its pre-Zuffa and Dana White days. UFC co-creator and former producer, Campbell McLaren, is hurt that his contributions to getting Rogan into the UFC have been overlooked.

Former UFC executive contradicts Dana White on Joe Rogan’s UFC hiring

Campbell McLaren feels Dana White did not give him credit for ‘discovering Joe Rogan, and is quite upset at it. After all, the UFC co-creator had been the one to hire Rogan to interview UFC fighters backstage in 1997 since he was good friends with Rogan’s then-manager. While the JRE podcast host never commented while McLaren was a producer, it was how Rogan’s association with the UFC started. And White making it seem like he was the one who discovered Rogan felt like the UFC CEO rewriting history and writing him out of it to McLaren.

“I call BS. Dana White forgot I hired Joe Rogan? And btw, I hired Brian Kilmeade too. I guess @ryan_harkness didn’t know that either,” McLaren tweeted, also taking shots at a recent article that had quoted White on the topic.

One Twitter user, however, pointed to the very fact that Rogan wasn’t trusted with the commentating duties in the pre-Zuffa days to McLaren. To which the former UFC producer had a terse response—it wasn’t that much of a leap going from doing fighter interviews to commentating, and he wanted Rogan to get more familiar with the sport before he could commentate.

“Amigo that’s an easy jump from backstage to commentary. First, he had to learn about the sport. [Brian Kilmeade] started doing backstage commentary too at UFC 1. And how did Dana White find [Joe Rogan] exactly?” he said. And since there are competing accounts of Rogan’s association with the UFC, it raises a very important question.

Who is right? White or McLaren?

White, of course, has claimed that he didn’t even know that Rogan had been with the UFC when he tried to rope him in to do commentary. This does seem accurate since Rogan had quit interviewing for the pre-Dana White UFC after two years since he didn’t make any money from it and was spending more money than he made for the gigs.

This means that by the time Dana White was impressed by Rogan and decided to hire him, the ‘Fear Factor’ host was no longer with the promotion. Not to mention White straightaway asked Rogan to become a color commentator instead of a more minor role like the one Campbell had seen fit.

Dana White’s recollection of events does seem quite true, and the timeline works out perfectly according to what the UFC CEO told Kilmeade. On the other hand, Campbell does have a legitimate grouse since he was the first to recognize the kind of value Rogan can add to the promotion, even if that version of the UFC brass didn’t really feel confident enough in Rogan to give him a bigger role or pay him to not quit after two years. What are your thoughts on Campbell’s tweets?