Joe Rogan may not be as abusive toward the UFC as Ronda Rousey, but his stance on how the promotion treats Jon Jones is clear.
Jones is now calling on the UFC to release him after matchmakers made “degrading” comments about him during White House negotiations. UFC CEO Dana White declared that Jones would never fight again due to his horribly arthritic hip. Jones scoffed at that medical prediction, and Rogan commented on it on the latest episode with Dustin Poirier.
“He doesn’t want it to end,” Rogan said of Jones. “I know he has stem cells in his butt. I know because I helped him get them. He talked about them. I wouldn’t have talked about them, but he talked about them. He got them from Ways2Well.”
“He’s feeling a lot better. He’s got arthritis in his hip and it’s bothering him, but he’s not in so much pain that he can’t fight. And he’s the best he’s ever been. Period.”
The UFC has been getting a lot of bad press lately for being cheap, and Rogan supported the idea of everyone competing to make more money in the promotion.
“I’ve always been of the opinion that fighter jets should make more money,” he said. “The way I run comedy clubs, the comedians make 80 percent of the money. It’s like we pay to see them. We make a lot of our money on alcohol, and we only make 20 percent of ticket sales. That’s enough. If you have a comedy club and there are no comedians, no one will come, right? No one will come to just sit around and buy drinks.”
“The whole idea is that you pay to see someone’s work,” he concluded. “If you fight, people are paying to see it. They’re paying to see the fighters.”
Rogan is in no position to tear anything new about the UFC’s pay structure, as he is paid by the company and is friends with top executives. But he enjoyed watching Ronda Rousey shake things up.
“She gave this long-winded speech about the $7 billion UFC Paramount deal and how these fighters are not making enough money,” he said. “Look, she makes some good points. The most important thing is that she gets the conversation going and puts pressure on the UFC to pay people more.”
Is that really true though? As of now, there is little evidence that the UFC will change their ways. We’ll be watching over the next few months to see if they put Conor McGregor back in the cage, or if they can match a true top contender in the division with any of their biggest stars. As of 2026, they haven’t done it yet.