Joe Rogan за TRT, проблемите със забранени стимуланти и контузиите в MMA

[neshev]

Joe Rogan е човекът! ОГРОМНО, no-fluff интервю с един от най-добрите коментатори въобще.

These days in MMA, everyone has an opinion. The trick is, to find the opinions that not only carry the most weight, but the ones that consistently make sense. Joe Rogan is one of the most intelligent people I have the good fortune to know. Every time I speak with him, I'm blown away by the knowledge he routinely drops. I recently interviewed Joe, to get his take on everything from judging issues to TRT. This is the first in a three part special.

Stephie Daniels: Judging seems to be a mess across combat sports in general, with the latest travesty being the Pacquiao vs. Bradley decision. What was your take on that?

Joe Rogan: I don't know if that was corruption. I know I said it was it was corruption, but if it was, that's really blatant. I have a hard time believing that those competent judges saw that fight different than every single person I've talked to. That's not a fight like Shogun vs. Machida I. There was a lot of Machida fans that really felt like he deserved the nod in that fight. There were some that thought it was divided 60/40. There's been some fights where there's been some disagreement. I have yet to talk to a person that thought Bradley won.

I still love boxing, and I enjoy watching a good fight, but the reality is, boxing is a boring sport compared to MMA. I really enjoy watching fights where I don't have to work. I'm not saying that I don't enjoy working, because I really enjoy working, but I like watching a fight where I can just shut the f**k up, so I've been watching a lot of kickboxing lately, a lot of K-1.

I talked to Dana at one point in time, when K-1 was in trouble, and they were getting bought out. I was like, 'Man, you guys should seriously think about buying K-1.' When you look at guys like Badr Hari and Daniel Ghita and Tyrone Spong, I mean, you're dealing with unbelievably exciting fights. Almost every fight is exciting, and they're fighting three rounds, so they're going for it. It's not like a boxing match where they're pacing themselves. These guys are going after it. There's a lot of talent, especially European guys. I really enjoy It's Showtime and K-1 Max.

It makes boxing seem dumb. It's dumb that you can't kick someone's legs. Why are we just boxing? What the f**k is that? It's silly. It's not the best way to fight. It's not even close to the best way of fighting. If Floyd Mayweather had to fight Michael McDonald, he'd probably beat him in a boxing match. For sure he'd beat him, even if they fought with little gloves on, but in an MMA match, I'm betting on McDonald. I'm betting McDonald hits him with a leg kick, takes his back and chokes the sh*t out of him. You know why? Because it's a better style. The fighting style of MMA is a better style. The best style is when you can use anything.

When you talk about stand-up, the best style is not just straight boxing. There's too many holes in it. Boxing, as a straight style, is actually better with MMA gloves than it is with boxing gloves. Boxing as a straight style with MMA gloves becomes several degrees more dangerous, because the small size of the gloves can sneak through small openings, because your hands move faster, and there's more impact because there's less padding. I think boxing as a style with boxing gloves is not nearly as effective as it is with MMA gloves.

Stephie Daniels: What do you think of the problems with judging in MMA and boxing?

Joe Rogan: I think they should fire judges that suck. I don't understand how someone can keep their job over and over again while screwing up over and over. What do you call that exactly? Extreme incompetence. How does someone judge any sort of combat sport without at least a passing interest in the sport? If you pulled aside, and I don't want to name any names, but if you pulled aside some of those judges from the Nevada State Athletic Commission, that has notoriously had horrific scoring, and started asking them about fighters that aren't fighting in the UFC, would they know anything about them? Would they know anything about who the top judo guy is? Would they even know anything about Gilbert Melendez and how good he is?

Do these guys know how you set up an armbar? If I sat them down and said, 'Do an armbar on this guy', would they be able to do that? I think you've got to know when a guy's in trouble and when a guy's not in trouble, and the only way to know that, is to have actually trained. I don't think you can be a person who judges martial arts without being an expert in martial arts.

I have never had a mixed martial arts fight, but I'm a martial arts expert. I've been a martial arts expert since I was a little boy. I know what I'm really good at, and I know what I don't understand as well, but I have dedicated my entire life to martial arts. It's been a focus of mine since I was a growing boy, so when I commentate on MMA, I do it with the passion of someone who is 100% a fan. If I had to choose between my job with the UFC and not being a fan anymore, I would for sure just quit working.

Stephie Daniels: When you talk about the judges needing some form of MMA training or experience, would you say that also translates to the referees?

Joe Rogan: Absolutely. No doubt about it.

Stephie Daniels: What do you think of Kim Winslow, and who do you feel the best referees are?

Joe Rogan: Yeah, she should have some martial arts training. She has stood out as someone who has made a lot of mistakes, in my mind. I know that in this last event, there were several people that were upset with her.

Here's the thing about referees. They never get praised, and they always get sh*t on. There's a few guys like Josh Rosenthal and Herb Dean that have really avoided almost all criticism because they're so damned good. You never realize how good they are because they just get the job done. I've always said that Herb Dean is the best, but recently, Josh Rosenthal's reffing has been so rock solid, that he has to be considered as the best, right up there with Herb.

Of course Big John is the gold standard. He was the original great referee. John's made some mistakes, but you know what? John has been around forever. The Matt Lindland vs. Murilo Bustamante fight was a slight mistake John made. Well, I shouldn't say slight, because it could have changed the entire course of the fight. Matt Lindland tapped, and they said he didn't tap. John stopped the fight, then he restarted it, and then Lindland got him. That's gonna happen. John was setting the standards. It wasn't like he had someone to imitate. It was a completely new sport, and John was there every single step of the way.

Those are the three guys right there. If you ever had a main event, and those three guys were the refs, you could not go wrong. They're the best there is. They're awesome.

Stephie Daniels: What's your take on the rash of injuries that is currently plaguing the UFC:

Joe Rogan: You know, you'd have to be inside the camps to really know. I'm just speculating, like everybody else. There were a lot of pro MMA guys that trained at Legends, so I got to see some guys on a day to day basis, but the reality is, I'm not at Greg Jackson's camp. I'm not at any of these camps. You have to be there to see what's going on.

Stephie Daniels: I recently saw an interview with NCAA wrestling champion, Bubba Jenkins, that stated he felt that steroid use could be directly correlated with some of the injuries. Do you feel that might be a significant contributing factor?

Joe Rogan: It's certainly possible, but again, it's speculation, unless you're in the camps, but people have gotten caught for steroids, so we know steroids are really used. I think to speculate on why guys are getting injured in a sport where the main goal is to injure people is a little bit pointless.

I don't know how Randy Couture ever got through his career without getting seriously injured in a training camp, but someone should talk to him [laughs]. Someone should ask him, 'What are you doing? Are you doing yoga or stretching? Are you just training smarter than everybody else?'

Obviously, he's an incredibly tough guy, period. Obviously, he's an incredibly intelligent guy, as well. Whatever he did to ensure that his training camps were injury free, is something that should be studied. Randy was one of the greatest fighters of all time, and I can't recall him ever getting injured in training.

What is causing all this stuff? Probably a variety of different things. There's a lot of speculation. Mike Russell (journalist) once sent me something and asked me what I thought, but it was a statement by someone who's an insider, whose take on it was that people are training more than their bodies can manage, because so many people are on the sauce, that they have a distorted perception of what's possible, and that what these injuries are, is people who are clean, trying to keep up with people who are on the sauce.

Stephie Daniels: I know you work out and train pretty hard at 10th Planet. How do you keep yourself fairly injury free?

Joe Rogan: I don't stay injury free, not at all. I was actually off for four whole months with a serious back injury. I pulled a muscle, it's called your Levator scapulae, I think. It's where your scapula connects your muscles and tendons in the back. I pulled it a couple of times, and then it became sort of a chronic thing, where it would pop out every few months. One time, I tried to work through it, so instead of taking some time off, I trained anyway, and I really pulled it bad, to the point where I had numbness in my hand and some severe nerve pain in my elbow. The pulled muscle had the whole area inflamed, and it was impeding my nerves.

It was pretty serious sh*t, so I took a month where I didn't work out at all. I've never done that. I can't remember when I've ever done that, but for a whole month, I didn't do sh*t but get fat. I did that for probably about four weeks, and then I started to slowly get myself back into shape, and I had to do a lot of physical therapy. I had a lot of cold laser therapy and a lot of deep tissue massage and a lot of stretching. It was just a matter of getting it to heal. Now I'm training full blast again. It's 100%, but like I said, it was about four months. That's a third of a year being completely out of jiu jitsu.

I've also had both my knees reconstructed. I've had two ACL surgeries and another meniscus surgery. I've had my nose fixed, because my nose was completely smooshed inside, and it was just all useless, due to a deviated septum, and I couldn't breathe out of my nose. It's not like I'm injury free, even at my level of training, which is considerably less than it would take to even compete in an amateur MMA fight.

These guys are doing five, six days a week. Georges St. Pierre works out seven days a week. So, five, six days a week, and many hours a day. The amount of work that these fighters do is just going to break sh*t. There's no way around it. It's hard, except if you're Randy Couture [laughs].

I think a big part of what Randy is, is just really smart. Randy just knows how to train correctly. He's an intelligent guy, and he's not going to do something stupid and get himself hurt. I think he also is a very technical guy, as far as his fighting strategy, and so he's not forcing things either.

Stephie Daniels: I saw you posting in the UG on a thread related to an interview I did with Dr. Johnny Benjamin, so I've got to ask, what's your take on TRT usage in MMA?

Joe Rogan: Well, it's a tricky thing. First of all, the reason why I started talking about it in The Underground (forum), was because I was very upset with that doctor. He was talking about one possible reason why Frank Mir would need hormone replacement therapy at 33 years of age, and I thought that was very irresponsible. He's claiming that the only reason why Frank would need it, is if he abused steroids. That's not current at all, as far as research and why your body stops producing testosterone or produces it at a degraded level.

Head trauma is very much in the news and it's been talked about in many medical journals, and there are many studies on it that show a direct correlation between traumatic brain injury, or head trauma and your body's inability to produce testosterone. Anybody that knows anything about MMA, knows that Frank Mir has taken some f**king serious head trauma. Just the Shane Carwin and Brock Lesnar fights alone...think about the amount of times he got hit by Brock Lesnar in that fight. Full blast with those giant fists. Shane Carwin put him to sleep. Think about the fights that he's had that people forgot about, like Brandon Vera knocking him out or Pe de Pano beating him up. You don't even think about those fights. Not only that, he got hit by a f**king car, and launched through the air. I'm sure that's not too great for your brain either. He got hit by a car! Jesus Christ.

Why did this doctor stay that Frank Mir probably took steroids? I'll tell you why, because that's the sensational thing to say. That's the inflammatory thing to say. That's the thing that everybody wants to point at. They want to say, 'Ah, you need testosterone because you've done steroids', which it's true, that can be a cause. That can be a reason for why your body stops producing testosterone, but to say that is the cause, when there's a real clear case of absolute truth that you have that another cause of low testosterone which is prevalent throughout this guy's life...I mean, it's not like he was getting knocked out in private. He got knocked out on television in front of the whole world over and over again. That doesn't even count all the punishment he's taken in training. How many times has he been head kicked in training? How many times has he been dropped on his head in training? A f**king lot.

He's a world champion. He's training with some of the toughest f**king guys on the planet. That's gonna happen all day. You get in shape for the fight that he just had with Junior dos Santos, you're going through f**king war. For this doctor to step in and say that that's the reason, or imply that it is, that is really irresponsible. That's what I think about him.

There's a lot of doctors that want to be famous, and I don't necessarily think that it's a good thing. I think that's kind of gross. I think that you're either a doctor or you're an entertainer, and when you try to be a doctor-slash-entertainer, I just feel like you're slipping. I feel like something is going on here. I think he's trying to promote his agenda more than he's trying to spread medicine. That statement about Frank Mir, and implying that all these guys that take testosterone are taking it because they abused their bodies through steroids, that's really irresponsible, and that's not the kind of sh*t I would want to hear from my doctor.

Stephie Daniels: With several fighters in their 30s using TRT, such as Frank Mir, Chael Sonnen, and Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, do you feel that they should be allowed to bring their levels to that of a 25 year old, or should they be restricted to maintain levels that are age appropriate?

Joe Rogan: First of all, when you test them, when exactly are you testing them? You can test a guy after a hard workout or after sex, and he's going to test low. You can test a guy when he hasn't had sex or masturbated in a week, and he will test high. If you haven't been training, your levels will test high. There's a lot of different factors to consider. You can also fudge the test with big meals.

When you say the levels of a young man, or the levels of where they're supposed to be at, that's a thing that they can fudge, and also, they're only testing urine. That's a real problem. It's too expensive to test blood, but the reality is, you're not going to get accurate readings unless you test blood. When you're only testing urine, all you're testing for is blatant sh*t like these guys that test positive for oil based synthetic hormones and steroids like Deca or Nandralone, and things like that, but there's a lot of stuff that they can take to get it out of their system in just a few days. Then they can show up and test "clean". Now the prohibited substance isn't in their system at the time that they're actually competing.

That was sort of the argument that Alistair Overeem used. Overeem said that he got shot up by this doctor, he didn't know there was testosterone in it and that's what f**ked up his T/E ratio, which may or may not be true. If you're going to compete, and you're supposed to be clean, you've got to follow the rules. The rules are, you're not supposed to take steroids, period. It's not that you're not supposed to take steroids just when you fight, you're not supposed to take them at all, even in training. If you haven't had a TUE for TRT therapy, you're not supposed to be allowed to go to a doctor and have the doctor shoot you up with testosterone.

Yes, it will make you heal. Yes, it can fix your body. That's why hormones are produced. They're all about recovery and rebuilding your broken down tissue, but they're not endogenous. You're adding them. You're putting new stuff into your body to fix things, stuff that's prohibited. It becomes a real weird thing when it's not prohibited, and you just have to get an exemption for it. It's like, who gets an exemption and why. A 30 year old guy can get an exemption to use testosterone? What? What the f*ck is going on?

The one thing that I absolutely agreed with that doctor on, is that Chael probably couldn't have competed at a really high level in wrestling with hypogonadism. If his body wasn't producing testosterone, how could he have been a really good wrestler? How is that even possible? Then I looked online and found that hypogonadism can actually occur as you get older, and it's not necessarily something that you have to be born with.

That's something for Chael to answer, because I don't know if Chael is telling the truth. When he says, 'I was picked on. I didn't have a testicle', [laughs] he'll just start making sh*t up, and you don't know how much of it is real and how much of it is just marketing. I think if Chael owes us any truth at all, it's when did this happen. When were you not making testosterone? When did it all go down?

In Chael's case, just like it could be with anybody else, it might be head trauma. There are also some fighters that, as they get older, their body stops producing as much testosterone. On top of that, if you're training like a f**king wild animal, it's going to produce even less than that. So, there's the beatdowns you get from training, and there's the fact that your body's just not producing as much anymore. Then you just go to a doctor who says, 'Look, we can fix all that. You just need some TRT', and BOOM! You're up to 21 year old levels again. All you have to do is justify it, and when you get interviewed, you talk about your low testosterone and how terrible it was. 'Oh, it was awful. My dick didn't work. Oh , I couldn't work out in the morning', and now you've got some synthetic stuff in your body that lets you compete like a 21 year old.

Stephie Daniels: What do you think about nanomedicine and cutmen? How would you feel about a cutman administering nanomachines to a cut to seal it and heal it during a fight?

Joe Rogan: Well, we are going to have to deal with that at some point. We're going to have to deal with genetic engineering on every level. That's the question about this testosterone thing. I mean, should we allow people to supplement their testosterone? I don't know, but they're doing it. They're allowing it, so what happens now? Should we look at a guy like Frank Mir and say, 'Well Frank shouldn't need hormone injections in his 33 year old, healthy body. What's going on?' Should we say Frank Mir has got to retire? Should we say, 'Frank Mir, your body has taken so much punishment, that your brain is not producing enough testosterone anymore. We say that this is really unusual for a 33 year old man, and we recommend you retire from your fighting career before you do irreparable damage to yourself.'? That's a very legitimate argument, as well. The argument that when a 33 year old man isn't producing enough testosterone, because he's taken ferocious beatings for over a decade. Maybe no more ferocious beatings.

I think I'm for the idea of people competing naturally. I just think that there's going to come a point in time where that's going to be ridiculous. It's not yet, but there's going to come a point in time where your mailman can go to a f88king GNC, and take a pill and it turns him into the Hulk [laughs]. I mean, what are you going to do? You're going to say, 'But I'm all natural.' I don't care if you're all natural, my f**king mailman can jump over my house. Why would I want to watch some guys fight that are all natural when my mailman is flying through the f**king neighborhood like the Hulk? It sounds ridiculous, and I am half joking, but we've opened the door with TRT, and it's just the beginning of what is eventually going to be a crazy debate over what we are allowed to do with our bodies.

Stephie Daniels: I sometimes play devil's advocate and toy with the idea of leveling the playing field entirely, by letting the athletes take whatever they want. What are your thoughts on that notion?

Joe Rogan: When it comes to competing, I don't think you should be able to do something that's cheating. I think we have to really look at what is causing guys to stop producing hormones, and if it is that these guys are taking too many shots to the head. Look, we might love to see Frank Mir fight, and I do love to see him fight, but we should look at what the f*ck is going on. Your body is not producing hormones anymore, man. That's just step one in the ultimate deterioration.

Should you say, 'F*ck it, let's go Phil Baroni style, and ride this bitch until the wheels fall off'? That's an option, and I support a person's right to make that choice, but to say that everything should be legal, then you're going to make kids take them. If you give someone some crazy sh*t, and they can just run faster and they're stronger, how is a regular person supposed to compete with that?

Stephie Daniels: Do you feel that the punishment levied against Nick Diaz by the NSAC was unnecessarily severe?

Joe Rogan: Absolutely. They're punishing him for daring to question them, and I believe his lawyers were intending to sue them at one point. I forget what the exact wording was. Not only that, he didn't even test positive for marijuana, he tested positive for a non cycle active marijuana metabolite, which let them deduce that he had smoked marijuana within X amount of days before his competition.

Saying that marijuana is something that you can't take is really ridiculous when you're talking about a guy that has a marijuana license. Marijuana and TRT have now been approved in California now, and they're saying he could have requested an exemption, and that he didn't, and that is the problem, that he didn't do the proper paperwork.

You know, I think if that is the case, if that's all it would have required, then maybe what you should do is give him a very small fine. Here's my thoughts. If he showed up high as f*ck and fought baked, yeah, you should probably suspend the guy. I do think it's a performance enhancing supplement. I do think it's a PED. If you're fighting high, I think it aids you. People say, 'Why?' Well, Nick Diaz is high all day long, son. He can manage that.

If you get Kelly Slater out on a surf board, he's been there, done that. He can ride the waves. Well, Nick Diaz rides the weed waves. Some people can't ride those waves. Some people would take the amount of weed that Nick Diaz smokes in a day, and they'd f**king hide under their couch. Nick Diaz smokes that weed and gets on a bike and does a triathalon. You know why? Because he rides that weed wave every day. That weed wave is his friend.

When he's high as f*ck, I bet he performs outstanding. If you let Nick Diaz fight high, I bet nobody would beat him. How about that? He'd probably be in a f**king zone you couldn't even deal with, man. He'd probably be doing weird sh*t like sitting in his corner in a lotus position in between rounds. He might fight you with his back turned to you [laughs]. He rides those weed waves every day. I don't think that you should allow Nick Diaz to fight high. If you did, it would be fascinating, and I think it would prove that marijuana is a performance enhancing supplement.

I do jiu jitsu high all the time. It's not something that I invented. It's something that Brazilians invented. I can't tell you how many high level BJJ black belts I know that smoke weed, and they tell you that it improves your flow. It makes you single minded. It makes you concentrate almost entirely on what you're doing. It drowns out the rest of the world.

The thing is, Nick Diaz wasn't high when he fought Carlos Condit. It was very clear that he wasn't high. He had non cycle active metabolites in his system, and just a trace amount of them. All that means is that he didn't stop his intake of marijuana in time. What's not fair about it, is that he's not fighting impaired, and he's not fighting enhanced. He's fighting in a normal, sober state of mind. That was proven, so he hasn't violated the rules. He wasn't fighting under the influence of a performance enhancing supplement.

What they did was a vindictive thing. What they did was because they wanted to punish him. If you're saying that he could have applied for an exemption, and because he didn't, you're going to make him sit out for a year, you're an asshole, and you shouldn't be in charge of deciding anything. That's a sh*t decision. That's an unfair, unjust decision by a bunch of people, who just for whatever f**king reason, were voted in, or elected in or appointed, have too much power. You're not doing a good job with that power. I strongly disagree with that judgement. I found the whole thing to be gross.

http://www.bloodyelb...naire-joe-rogan

http://www.bloodyelb...e-rogan-part-ii

http://www.bloodyelb...ogan-conclusion

[U_think_U_Know_Me]

Забранените симуланти са зли , UFC да позволява на всеки 5 мача 1 да е симулация . Борбата за прозрачност при симулацията е безмилостно жестока , що значи тука някакъв си Нешев ?

[G]

Joe голям бизнес съветник на Dana излезе. Ако UFC купят K-1, то по тази логика те ще трябва да започнат да организират и отделни турнири по свободна борба, по джу-джитсу, самбо и тн. Направо да организират олимпийски игри свързани само с бойните спортове като са тръгнали. Това не е само striking компания, това е ММА и едва ли ще е добър бизнес ход, особено заради неспокойният инвестиционен климат свързан с K-1 в момента. Аз иначе съм все още против бивши ММА бойци/съдии, защото ще станем свидетели на много пристрастия в оценяването. Съотборници и приятели ще се оценяват, стилове ще се подценяват и тн. Според мен UFC или комисиите по регулация и мониторинг трябва да приложат обучения, много добри обучения на съдии и да ги интегрират специфично в ММА битките, за да не ставаме свидетели на некомпетентност и негативни резултати. Високи специалисти - нисък риск.

[U_think_U_Know_Me]

Съдийските оценки са много голям проблем като цяло за спорта . Невъзможно е да се ликвидира субективният момент (всички помним как на олимпиадата в Атина Йордан Йовчев остана втори) . В бойните спортове е дори по-трудно . Ще дам един прост пример : голяма част от феновете , поне на първично ниво , оценяват кой е победителя по това кой е по-свеж и по-малко насинен от двамата бойци . Това реално няма общо с това колко удара са нанесени в мача , в чия полза е била борбата на земята и тн . Има хора с остри скули , които получават аркади много лесно , има изключително носещи на бой хора . Мачът не трябва да се гледа и като чиста статистика , защото сме виждали , че хора не падат в нокаут при 50 точни удара , не са били предавани при 5-6 събаряния на земята и тн. Оценката трябва да е комплексна и точно това я прави субективна , а при такава винаги е възможна грешка . Наблюдавахме в бокса съвсем наскоро несправедливо отсъждане , какво остава за къде-къде по-новото ММА .