Joe Rogan is pushing for the UFC to hold kickboxing and Muay Thai fights with five ounce gloves.
Joe Rogan wants the UFC to start their own kickboxing promotion.
Rogan is a longtime fan of all martial arts, having started as a kick-centric Tae Kwon Do fighter. So it’s unsurprising that he sees kickboxing and Muay Thai as an untapped opportunity UFC could jump on. He’s been bugging Dana White about the idea since 2011 and continues to this day.
He explained his reasoning in a new episode of The Joe Rogan Experience with combat jiu jitsu founder Eddie Bravo.
“Everybody loves stand-up,” he said. “When you’re watching MMA, sometimes fighters clinch and people go ‘Oooh.’ They wanna see wars. These are the crazy wars all the time, that’s the fight, crazy wars. Like how is that not big.”
“I brought it up with Dana and I said ‘Dude I know you guys are into the slap fight thing, but I think the thing that’s untapped is kickboxing. And he was like ‘Ah, but nobody would like that, that PKA Karate thing.’ That was like in the 80s. They literally used the call it ‘The Kick of the 80s.’ Remember?”
There’s the legendary K-1 promotion which has done massive numbers internationally, and Glory Kickboxing which took the mantle of biggest kickboxing promotion for a number of years. Neither has managed to break through in the US.
“[K-1] didn’t ever reach the heights that it was capable of reaching,” Rogan admitted. “It could have with Glory. Glory was very high level and they tried for a while. Put the UFC machine behind it. If they put the UFC promotional machine behind high level kickboxing and said ‘Hey we’re gonna sign the biggest fighters in the world, we’re gonna have UFC kickboxing.’”
“The UFC should hire Michael Schiavello and do a f—ing muay thai card,” he said. “Dana, I’ll commentate. You heard me. I’ll f—ing commentate it. Let’s go.”
Unfortunately for Rogan, Dana White has never been interested in kickboxing and suggested it was never going to be ‘a thing’ like mixed martial arts had become. But Joe believes that’s an opinion based on outdated information.
“Dana is a fan of whatever works,” Rogan said. “He’s a fan of fights. Just for whatever reason, he thinks kickboxing never caught on in America. And I think it’s because of that PKA s— they had in the 1980s. But dudes were wearing long pants, they couldn’t kick the leg. It’s a different sport, man.”
“If you look at the fights in ONE FC and you look at the classic K-1 kickboxing fights, my God how is that not fighting? It’s so exciting. And if they had them fight with the little gloves on like ONE FC does? If Dana decided to get behind that? God, it’d be huge.”
“Muay Thai,” he said with a big grin. “UFC Muay Thai.”