Joe Rogan isn’t 100 percent sold on the UFC proceeding with fights during the coronavirus pandemic.
Despite UFC president Dana White apparently confirming that Rogan will commentate the revamped UFC 249 card, Rogan says he hasn’t been given any information on the April 18 event, nor the private island that White mentioned as a location for upcoming events.
“We don’t know where it is,” Rogan said on his “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. “I’m trying to figure out what I’m doing, if I’m going to it or not. I don’t know where it is. I don’t even know if it’s in America. I literally right now, as of right now, I don’t know (expletive). I have no information.”
UFC 249, which reportedly will take place on tribal land at Tachi Palace Casino Resort in Lemoore, Calif., will be headlined by an interim lightweight title fight between Tony Ferguson and Justin Gaethje. The bout was set after champion Khabib Nurmagomedov was forced off the card due to the travel ban in Russia.
Ferguson and Gaethje have a combined 17 fight-night bonuses in the octagon, and the UFC 249 headliner has the potential to be a violent and action-packed affair. Because of that, Rogan is concerned with the health and safety of the fighters.
“There’s no social distancing in a (expletive) 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.
“What if one of those guys tests positive? What if Justin Gaethje tests positive? Guy’s supposed to be fighting Ferguson. I have a feeling that if someone did test positive, they would kick them off the card. I shouldn’t say kick them off the card; I should say remove them from the card. I would imagine it has to be the right thing to do, and then you would also have to quarantine the people that worked with him in training camp, and you have to test everybody.”
With 12 fights currently on the UFC 249 lineup, there will be plenty of fighters, cornermen and staff on the premises. White, however, has confirmed that the everyone involved will be tested for COVID-19.
Rogan, though, still thinks putting on a fight card in the middle of a pandemic is a major risk.
“There’s a lot of people that are upset with it,” Rogan said. “It’s very controversial. The whole thing is very controversial … because they don’t want anybody to do anything out of the norm of social distancing and of quarantining. We’re on lockdown right now.”
