Joe Rogan was a menace back in the day. Comedian Louis CK would remember that his first memory of Rogan, back when they were in school in Boston, was hearing that Rogan punched a kid who came up and tried to bully him. Because of his diminutive size, Rogan was a target for bullies, and got into martial arts to learn to defend himself against bigger assailants.

And in no time, Rogan was excelling in taekwondo, winning tournaments, and even teaching others before he was twenty. By the time he was out of high school, the New Jersey native was a four-time Massachusetts full-contact champion and a US Open winner in taekwondo.

But alas, there was virtually no money in any martial art other than boxing at the time, and MMA or the UFC didn’t exist in 1989, when Rogan had his third and last amateur kickboxing fight of his life, after which he quit martial arts for good and moved on to comedy.

But what if it did? What if the UFC existed at the time Rogan was growing up? Would he have trained MMA and tried to become UFC champion? Well, the UFC commentator answered this exact question on episode #2320 of his JRE podcast featuring comedian Tom Segura.

“If the UFC was around when I was competing, I 100% would have done it, and then imagine how dumb I would be now at 57 years old. Oh, I’d be a mess… a lot of like drooling and ‘Hey! You look good. You losing weight?’… My brain would be like a four-cylinder engine, like all f—ed up, misfiring,” Rogan said.

One of the main reasons Rogan quit martial arts is because he was afraid of the brain damage he was taking in the fights and during training. “I was getting headaches just from sparring. I did not spar smart. I sparred meathead style,” Rogan once recalled on his podcast.

The future Fear Factor host and his teammates used to go all out and engage in hard sparring, which had begun to give Rogan bad headaches. So it isn’t like Rogan completely escaped the clutches of brain damage. But the Texas resident actually doesn’t mind the amount of punishment his brain has taken.

Joe Rogan credits brain damage to becoming one of the most successful people in the world

“I think I got the right amount of brain damage… I think there’s just a certain amount that you get that makes you just a little reckless, a little crazy… I got just a touch of brain damage that allows me to be– I enjoy risks. I like them, they’re fun,” Rogan told Segura.

Not to mention Rogan got his life-long love for combat sports– including the UFC– because of his martial arts background. Rogan has been working with the promotion since 1997, back when no one but a very niche fanbase even knew what the UFC was. His long stint as a martial artist undoubtedly helped him commentate the sport, which is how most UFC know Rogan.

Moreover, you can imagine that Rogan was a pretty damn hard worker by his accomplishments. One does not become a multiple-time state champion without having an extraordinary work ethic. One of the reasons Rogan is so successful is that he started his podcast before most people even knew what the word meant. The UFC commentator had the work ethic to grind hard and do something every day that didn’t even make money initially, which is undoubtedly something he also learned from his martial arts career. What do you think about Joe Rogan’s thoughts about joining the UFC?