Veteran color commentator Joe Rogan still thinks about retiring from calling fights for the UFC but as of right now he’s definitely enjoying his job.
It was around the same time that the UFC sold to Endeavor for more than $4 billion that Rogan talked about potentially walking away from calling fights while pursuing different endeavors in his career.
Beyond calling UFC fights, Rogan has one of the most popular and most listened to podcasts in the world not to mention a rigorous comedy schedule that could easily keep him touring throughout the year.
While he admits that he still thinks about retiring from the UFC, Rogan says that he still enjoys his job right now and it’s helped that he’s been able to cut down on the amount of work he’s doing these days.
“I do enjoy it,” Rogan said on his podcast. “I cut way back. Cause first of all I was doing too many of them. At one point I was doing 24 a year, it was way too many. It was like half of the weekends of the year, I was flying somewhere to go to the UFC. It was too much.
“That was before the UFC really started adding a bunch of people and it took a lot of the weight off of me.”
While Rogan was a mainstay on all pay-per-view broadcasts as well as the major cards that previously aired on FOX, he’s cut back his schedule dramatically over the past few years.
Rogan now only calls the North American pay-per-views for the UFC and no longer works on any international shows whatsoever. He’s also not expected to call the fights on ESPN as he stays focused on the pay-per-views, which typically featured the biggest contests in the UFC.
That means Rogan will average around 10 events per year with the UFC typically holding at least one pay-per-view in Australia and another in Brazil as it’s been done in the past.
With the reduced schedule, Rogan says he’s not sure if he’ll ever retire because he still enjoys what he does calling the fights and having too much free time on his hands doesn’t appeal to him either.
“I don’t think about retiring because I like what I do,” Rogan said. “So I don’t think about ‘oh I need ‘X’ amount of money in the bank so I’m not going to do this very much longer’. I like all that stuff.
“I think it keeps me from going crazy. I think being active keeps me from losing my marbles.”
If there’s one part of his job Rogan would gladly eliminate, it’s calling the weigh-ins the day before a big pay-per-view event.
Rogan will typically announce the fighters as they hit the scales and then conduct interviews with the main event athletes following the ceremonial weigh-ins the day before a big fight.
Rogan says that figuring out how to properly pronunciate the names of the fighters is tough and if he could avoid doing the weigh-ins, he definitely would.
“I don’t like doing the weigh-ins,” Rogan said. “It’s stressful.”
This article first appeared at News – MMAWeekly.com
