Joe Rogan wants people to know that it wasn’t all his idea to interview Conor McGregor following the fighter’s injury at UFC 264.
Moments after Conor McGregor broke his leg in his trilogy bout with Dustin Poirier—an injury that brought a swift end to the contest—Rogan was right there to get McGregor’s immediate thoughts, which led to a surreal scene of the two men sitting down in the octagon while McGregor shared his impassioned take on the fight.
Much criticism has been lobbied at McGregor for directing personal attacks at Poirier and his family in the aftermath of the heated clash and Rogan has caught some of the flack as well for interviewing McGregor in the first place.
On a recent episode of his podcast, Rogan explained why he seized the moment.
“People are like, ‘why did you interview him?’ He actually brought me over,” Rogan said (h/t LowKickMMA). “He goes ‘Come over here lad, let’s have a podcast.’ He said, ‘Come on Joe let’s have a f*cking podcast’. He like asked me to sit down next to him. I was like, ‘How am I going to do this? I feel like I should just get something out of him.’ Even if you recognize the fact that he is emotionally charged up, this is just him expressing himself while he was emotionally charged up.”
McGregor’s post-fight state doesn’t explain some of the other comments he has made since UFC 264, including questioning the legitimacy of Poirier’s win and just this morning appearing to mock Khabib Nurmagomedov’s father dying from COVID-19 complications.
“The Notorious” has also made the claim that he had stress fractures in his leg prior to the bout that the UFC knew about and that he decided to fight through anyway. With controversy around the third Poirier fight still lingering, Rogan eagerly invited McGregor to join him on his podcast for a proper conversation.
“Take that scooter down here, Conor, come on, let’s talk,” Rogan said. “Let’s do a podcast, Conor. He’s a special person. It takes a special person to even want to fight the way he’s fighting with a half a billion dollars in the bank. He’s probably, like, the richest guy that ever really wanted to fight hard.
“Even Floyd Mayweather, as rich as he is, and he’s one of the all-time greats if not the greatest boxer of all time, he’s fighting people that have zero chance of beating him because he’s smart. He’s like, ‘I’m just gonna make a lot of money here.’ Conor is fighting Dustin Poirier, he’s fighting ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone. He’s fighting Khabib Nurmagomedov while he’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars.”