There were some holes in Joe Rogan’s critique of the next UFC middleweight title fight, and the champion was more than happy to point them out.
Joe Rogan both is and isn’t a fan of Michael Bisping defending his 185 lb throne against arguably the greatest fighter to ever grace an Octagon, Georges St-Pierre.
The UFC colour commentator let rip at the promotion on the 5ive Rounds podcast for booking the fight and snubbing Yoel Romero, who has an eight-fight win-streak in the division. However, as Bisping pointed out on The Countdown on Sirius XM, Rogan said he’d be more than willing to part with his hard-earned cash to watch Bisping try to add another ‘greatest of all time’ contender to his impressive collection of scalps.
“Listen, Joe’s a very smart man and he’s very learned on the subject of mixed martial arts and the UFC. He’s been around forever. He knows the sport, but as I say, he kind of contradicted himself. He’s like, ‘why have title fights?’ but then he says, ‘I, for sure, would get the popcorn and buy this PPV.”
Complete sense here from @joerogan https://t.co/CbFlGms17d
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) March 9, 2017
Bisping explained that the promotion came to him with the GSP fight offer and he merely accepted it. At 38 years old, he’s aware that his time at the top of the middleweight pile could come to a grinding halt at any moment and to him, taking on a huge PPV draw like ‘Rush’ in a superfight just made more sense from a business perspective than taking on a number one contender who doesn’t move the needle half as much.
“See, to become a champion, you have to pay your dues which I did for a long, long, long time. When you become the champion, it changes because now, it’s only a very small portion, but you get a portion of the PPV. Now every single fight you have, there’s a possibility you’re going to lose that fight, So you want to maximise the potential.”
“You want the fights to be as big as possible, but in terms of credibility as well, that has to be a factor. With Georges St-Pierre coming back, I feel like I’m trying to justify a point that I’ve said a million times, but Joe actually just said there himself, he would buy the fight. He 100% would buy it, so therefore, there goes my argument.”
"His tale is a success story, and that's plain for all to see.” #UFC204 https://t.co/aaXftvgjPw
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) October 11, 2016
Rogan also challenged Bisping on his claim that he would be looking to have a quick turnaround and take on ‘The Soldier of God’ a few weeks after the GSP fight. The man who knocked out Luke Rockhold after stepping in on 17 days notice argued that not waiting around to fight Romero would make perfect sense for him, as long as he didn’t get hurt.
“Well actually, it’s not crazy, it’s not ludicrous, it’s not beyond the realms of imagination, because Georges St-Pierre, in a lot of ways, is the perfect warm-up fight for Yoel Romero. They’ve got very similar styles. Yes, Yoel is bigger and hits harder, but they’ve both got fantastic wrestling, they’re both shorter guys than me.”
“Say we fight, I don’t know when it is, say UFC 215 for argument’s sake. UFC 217, I’ll do it (fight Romero). I’ll do it because I don’t want all the work I’ve done, all the wrestling work I’ve done, I don’t want to get rusty in that regard.”
Remember folks, the UFC pushed for this fight. Bisping and GSP merely accepted their offer.
