Recently on his Joe Rogan Experience podcast, UFC commentator Joe Rogan was talking shop with weight loss guru Mike Dolce. The conversation developed into Dolce touching on topics of hyping a fight between Jon Jones and Chael Sonnen—to whom Dolce was assisting in the pre-fight camp. Dolce brought up a time where he was (mildly) confronted by Jones for what he perceived to be ‘trash talk,’ coming from Dolce, when he was attempting to hype the fight. Dolce did clear the air and say that Jones later went on to apologize about the misunderstanding; but the conversation between Rogan and Dolce then developed into the two friends talking about Jones’ personality, character, and the how the fans perceive him. Rogan then pushed a thought out into the universe that got misquoted, misinterpreted, and drug through the mud by the majority.
Let’s be honest about it, Jones is routinely made out to be the ‘bad guy’ in his fights. He’s no stranger to boos and general fan dislike. I’m certain there’s a fan base out there that are genuine fans of Jon Jones, but his track history with fans hasn’t really been known to be synonymous with being beloved. With that in mind, on his podcast, Rogan said: “I don’t understand it. In my opinion, I will never miss a Jon Jones f***ing pay-per-view. I’ve heard people say, ‘Oh, he’s cocky. He’s this and [that].’ I wonder what the f**k is going on with that and I’m going to throw this out there, I’m just going to say it: I wonder how much of it is racism. I really do.” And that’s where everything went sideways and got twisted up. What it all boiled down to is some media outlets saying that Rogan was attributing Jones’ dislike to racism—and not wondering if any of it was due to it at all.
So today, Rogan took to his Twitter to clear the air.
{source}
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” lang=”en data-scribe-reduced-action-queue=”><p>I've been misquoted left & right about Jon Jones lack of popularity. I said "I wonder how much of it is racism" key words: WONDER & HOW MUCH</p>— Joe Rogan (@joerogan) <a href=”https://twitter.com/joerogan/status/509728711822671872″>September 10, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
{/source}
I think it’s important to realize what the guy was trying to say. Too often we want to believe what we hear and not understand what we’re listening to. I don’t want to come off on some high horse, or some guy playing Monday Morning Quarterback after the fact, but I sincerely didn’t think Rogan was implying anything when I heard him pose the question on his podcast. Sure, it’s possible that a percentage of the Jones haters dislike him with racial intentions. After all, the topic of Rogan’s discussion with Dolce at that point was the dislike for Jones. Rogan was just wondering how much (if any) of it was due to racism. It’s a curious thought; but, if there is an amount of dislike for the world champ, it’s got to be very tiny because the last time I checked, Anderson Silva isn’t hurting for fans.
