Joe Rogan still hesitant about calling UFC 249 despite Dana White’s claims

Joe Rogan is hesitant about serving as a commentator for UFC 249, and from the sounds of it, for any other UFC cards that occur during the coronavirus pandemic.

Rogan previously stated that he wouldn’t be on commentary duty for UFC 249.

“The UFC is talking about putting on a fight on April 18th,” Rogan said during a recent episode of his Joe Rogan Experience podcast. “I don’t know how they’re gonna do that.

“I guess someone’s gonna commentate it [but] it’s not gonna be me,” he added.

UFC President Dana White later denied Rogan ever made this comment, and assured that the former Fear Factor host will be sitting at the commentary desk for the card.

“He did not say that,” Dana White said in a subsequent interview with TMZ. “Again, you can not listen to anything the media says. Nobody talked to him, they heard him talking on a podcast. So they start writing stories off a podcast that are full of sh*t. Rogan will be there.”

Despite White’s insistence, Rogan still isn’t sold on working this card. While the event is rumored to be taking place at the Tachi Palace Casino in California, he says he still has no idea where it’s happening.

“We don’t know where it is,” Rogan said on a more recent episode of the Joe Rogan Experience. “I’m trying to figure out what I’m doing, if I’m going to it or not. I don’t know where it is. I don’t even know if it’s in America. I literally, as of right now, I don’t know sh*t. I have no information.”

While it’s conceivable Rogan will be convinced to call this event, he seems to have some concerns about the health risks associated with promoting a fight card during a pandemic. Specifically when two violent individuals like Tony Ferguson and Justin Gaethje are involved.

“There’s no social distancing in a f*cking cage fight,” Rogan said. “They’re on top of each other sweating in each other’s mouths. If Tony Ferguson’s fighting, there’s gonna be blood, for sure. Everybody that fights Tony Ferguson looks like they fell off a train, so there’s gonna be blood. . .

“What if one of those guys test positive? What if Justin Gaethje tests positive? He’s supposed to be fighting Ferguson. . . I have a feeling that if someone did test positive, they would kick them off the card. I shouldn’t say kick them off the card, remove them from the card. I would imagine it has to be the right thing to do. Then you would also have to quarantine the people that worked with him in training camp and test everybody.”

Suffice it to say that Dana White may have jumped the gun when he guaranteed we’ll hear Joe Rogan on the UFC 249 broadcast.

This article first appeared on BJPENN.com on 4/9/2020.