Joe Rogan was facing a dilemma ahead of the scheduled UFC 249 pay-per-view. With Dana White and the UFC doing everything in their power to hold the event despite the coronavirus pandemic, there were questions about who would call the fights.
Well, after some pressure from top ESPN and Disney executives, the UFC was forced to cancel the event and postpone all future events indefinitely. The news broke on Thursday afternoon and Rogan reacted in real-time.
During the latest episode of his Joe Rogan Experience podcast, the longtime UFC commentator was chatting it up with former UFC heavyweight turned podcaster and comedian Brendan Schaub when the news broke. Rogan read the news and provided his real-time reaction to the development.
Rogan’s initial reaction was a sigh of relief, knowing he would no longer have to weigh the decision of whether to head to Tachi Palace to call the fights.
“Wow! That’s interesting. Well, that saves me a lot of f*cking thinking,” Rogan said. “Damn. I was 75 percent ready to go. The only thing that worried me was if I contracted something and then came in contact with other people. So what I was gonna do is do it if I definitely could get tested and then I would have to know the results before I come back, but f*cking – even then you don’t know.
“I think they made probably a risk assessment and then they made a calculation of what the negative aspects of going against government regulations, in terms of state government, would be and they probably were like, ‘We can’t do this.’
“Listen man, I was hesitant. I was like, ‘I really want to go’, I was leaning towards going, but I’m like, ‘God, I don’t want to hear it from people who don’t think it’s a good idea.’ I’m not interested in putting myself at risk but my real concern was how do I know if I contract it and then bring it back, how am I gonna know? And then I had to be honest with myself and I really wouldn’t know. So the only way I’d be able to do it is to do it and then be in quarantine until I get tested, and I was like, ‘Oh Jesus Christ.'”
You can watch the real-time reaction below.
