Joe Rogan has some advice for Conor McGregor for a potential rematch with Nate Diaz at UFC 200: Less movement coaching, more jiu jitsu.
Nate Diaz vs. Conor McGregor 2 is looming. It hasn’t been made official yet, but the welterweight bout seems increasingly likely as the main event of UFC 200. And if it all goes down as planned, Joe Rogan has some sage advice for the UFC’s featherweight champion when he takes his second crack at Nate Diaz and 170 lbs. The message? Work on your jits.
Rogan imparted as much on recent episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” (at about 10 minutes into the episode) saying that McGregor needs to get “obsessed with jiu jitsu” if he’s going to compete with Nate Diaz (transcript via MMAFighting):
“If it goes to the ground? Oh, that’s the wrong guy,” Rogan said of Diaz on his podcast. “Nate Diaz is the wrong guy to go to the ground with. Nate Diaz is a legit black belt, a really high-level black belt. I knew Conor had gotten submitted by Joe Duffy. Anybody can get submitted if you get caught, but he got submitted by that Joe Duffy guy just a few years ago. Joe Duffy is a very talented fighter, no doubt about it, but Nate wouldn’t have gotten submitted by that same guy. I highly, highly, highly doubt it.
“A guy like Conor, if you’ve been tapped before by Joe Duffy just a few years ago with an arm triangle … to get caught like that, you’ve got a lot to learn and I don’t know if you’ve learned it all in time. You’ve got to be obsessed with jiu jitsu. You’ve got to be in there every day training and I didn’t think he did [for UFC 196]. I thought it was more about movement and striking and all that stuff. I know he was doing some jiu jitsu but it’s not like the primary focus. So I felt like, ‘That’s a big f**king deep end jump.'”
Is it possible that McGregor is essentially the same grappler he was back when he got submitted in 2010 (coming up on six years ago now)? It doesn’t seem very likely. And I’m not so sure that being hurt badly and totally exhausted didn’t play a bigger role in his submission loss than not knowing how to grapple, but maybe going to ground with Nate is the secret key we’ve all been ignoring for a triumphant UFC 200 return for “The Notorious”.