“So Illogical And It Drives Me Crazy”: Joe Rogan Criticizes UFC’s Weight Cut Tradition

Published 04/28/2022, 6:55 AM EDT

Weight cutting has been a part of combat sports for a long time. There are people who have pointed out the negative ways it can affect fighters. In a recent episode of ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’, Rogan discussed this issue with legendary MMA fighter BJ Penn.

The Spotify podcaster feels that weight cut is a huge problem. He said, “It’s so illogical and it drives me crazy. And it’s one of those things that I think we’re stuck with for no good reason. It’s a bad tradition.”

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“I think the problem really is just the weight cutting itself. I think if we could eliminate from that from the sport and make people fight at their natural weight. … It’s a bad culture because it doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

Both the famous personalities also spoke about similar traditions in boxing as well. In relation to this, they discussed the Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor boxing match.

Next, Penn spoke about the weight-cut mentality that MMA might have borrowed from wrestling. While Rogan agreed with him, he sees boxing influences more. He gave an example of the Boom Boom Mancini-Kim Duk-koo incident on how weight cutting can have perilous effects.

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Dehydration among fighters who strive to achieve cut weight has been a problem. Rogan and Penn discussed ONE Championship’s way of ensuring that fighters are hydrated. Therefore, both the personalities are not fond of the fighters cutting incredible amounts of weight in a short span of time.

Joe Rogan says dehydrated fighters are easy to knockout

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Rogan and Penn continued the subject of the conversation to the consequences of fighters being dehydrated. As said by the UFC commentator, such fighters can get easily knocked out as well as can be more susceptible to concussions. Hence, Rogan feels it is ‘crazy’ to allow fighters to go to such lengths.

The commentator’s perspective might not be too far off from reality. As per an article published by ‘Bloody Elbow‘, severe weight cuts can have a lot of negative effects on the body. They explained it by using UFC fighter Frankie Edgar as an example.

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Thus, Rogan and BJ Penn seem to not like the fact that fighters ‘starve’ themselves right before facing a dangerous opponent in the octagon. Do you agree with their point of view?

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Written by:

Rohini Kottu is a UFC Writer at EssentiallySports. She is also a Psychologist and has a Master's degree in Clinical Psychology. Rohini, in her role as a UFC writer, combines her admiration for the mental resilience that MMA fighters have and her love for analysis.

Edited by:

Paras Pande

“So Illogical And It Drives Me Crazy”: Joe Rogan Criticizes UFC’s Weight Cut Tradition

Joe Rogan says dehydrated fighters are easy to knockout

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