Joe Rogan might be the biggest podcaster in the world, raking in over 14 and a half million listeners, but he’s also a stand up comedian that can sell out arenas, the former host of Fear Factor, a martial artist, and the longtime commentator for the UFC.
Rogan has his fair share of detractors, but 99.9% of them have never listened to a single podcast, and a couple years back, one of those detractors was Neil Young.
Ol’ Neil (as Lynyrd Skynyrd would say) was putting Joe down and vowed to leave Spotify due to Rogan’s “misinformation” regarding the COVID pandemic. He did leave (nobody missed him) and then he just recently came back because Spotify is “the #1 streamer in the world.” Nothing like sticking to your principles, eh Neil?
Anyways, during all that mess, the effort to cancel Joe as pretty heavy (once again, from people who never listened to a podcast in their life), and everyone and their mother was digging up a reason to cancel him.
As far as personalities go, Joe might be as un-cancelable as it comes, and this conversation with UFC president Dana White might help to explain why.
On a recent episode of The Lex Fridman Podcast, Lex and Dana started talking about the immense contribution that Joe has had to the UFC, and Lex prefaced the conversation by saying:
“I value loyalty a lot, and I remember there was a moment not too long ago, maybe a year ago, and I was sitting with Joe and he had a phone call with you and Joe was getting canceled for something and they didn’t want him commentating the fights and you on the phone offered your resignation over this.
I got teary-eyed over that. That’s such a… you’re a good man, that was powerful.”
To which Dana said:
“Anybody who is with me knows, when you’re with me, you’re with me. It’s a two-way street. It’s not a one-way street. I’m not one of these guys that is going to roll over. It’s like going through COVID, I wasn’t laying any of these people off. Some of these people have been with me for 20 yearss, we’re going to lay them off?
This mf’er will burn, burn before I would do that to my people. It’s just never, none of that type of stuff is ever going to happen while I’m here. I can’t say what’s going to happen when I leave. But when I’m here, the people who are with me and have been with me, they know exactly what’s up.
And Joe knows what’s up, and again it’s a two-way street. Joe Rogan has been very loyal to me, and I am very loyal to Joe Rogan.”
Respect.
