Photo by Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
UFC 249 is taking place on April 18 and according to industry reports, the pay-per-view (PPV) event will be staged at Tachi Palace Resort & Casino, part of the Santa Rosa Indian Community, featuring a lightweight main event between Tony Ferguson and Justin Gaethje.
And while the full fight card was released on Monday, there’s been no confirmation on referee or judging assignments. In addition, longtime color commentator, Joe Rogan, originally told the combat sports community he wasn’t attending.
That didn’t sit well with UFC President Dana White.
“He did not say that, you can’t listen to anything the media says,” White told TMZ Sports. “Nobody talked to him, they heard him talking on a podcast, you know what I mean? So they start writing stories off a podcast, that are full of shit. Rogan will be there.”
I know White likes to scream “fake news” every time he reads a headline he doesn’t like, but the exact quote from Rogan was, “I guess someone’s gonna commentate it, it’s not gonna be me.” I’m not sure how that became the wimpy media’s fault.
In fact, it sounds like Rogan is still on the fence in terms of participating, which is understandable when you consider that traveling greatly increases the risk of contracting coronavirus. Either that or he’s just playing dumb for his audience.
“I’m trying to figure out what I’m doing, if I’m going to it or not,” Rogan said on Wednesday’s podcast. “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 shit. I have no information.”
“There’s no social distancing in a fucking cage fight,” Rogan said. “They’re on top of each other, sweating in each other’s mouths. If Tony Ferguson’s fighting, there’s going to be blood, for sure. Everybody that fights Tony Ferguson looks like they fell off a train, so there’s going to be blood.”
White has kept everyone on a need-to-know basis in an effort to stymie the “creeps” who will try to sabotage the event. Either that, or he’s still trying to figure out some of the last minute details and doesn’t have all the answers he’s claiming to have.
We’ll find out soon enough.