JRE MMA Show #62 with Brendan Schaub
Joe Rogan (host), Brendan Schaub (guest), Jamie Vernon (guest), Narrator, Guest (guest), Guest (guest), Narrator, Narrator, Narrator, Narrator
In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, featuring Joe Rogan and Brendan Schaub, JRE MMA Show #62 with Brendan Schaub explores rogan and Schaub Breakdown Epic UFC Fights, Weight Cuts, Doping, Streaming Joe Rogan and Brendan Schaub spend the episode breaking down the recent UFC card featuring Dustin Poirier vs. Max Holloway and Israel Adesanya vs. Kelvin Gastelum, calling it one of the greatest events and title fights ever. They dive deep into weight-cutting, optimal weight classes, and how size disparities affected Holloway at 155 and fighters like Adesanya, Gastelum, and Yoel Romero at 185. A major thread is performance-enhancing drugs and USADA—especially TJ Dillashaw’s EPO suspension, how EPO works, testing limits, and what’s fair punishment. They also discuss illegal streaming and the ESPN+ rollout, future matchmaking and divisions, the economics of fighter pay and stardom, and branch into broader topics like Amazon/Bezos, social media, comedy process, and pop culture.
Rogan and Schaub Breakdown Epic UFC Fights, Weight Cuts, Doping, Streaming
Joe Rogan and Brendan Schaub spend the episode breaking down the recent UFC card featuring Dustin Poirier vs. Max Holloway and Israel Adesanya vs. Kelvin Gastelum, calling it one of the greatest events and title fights ever. They dive deep into weight-cutting, optimal weight classes, and how size disparities affected Holloway at 155 and fighters like Adesanya, Gastelum, and Yoel Romero at 185. A major thread is performance-enhancing drugs and USADA—especially TJ Dillashaw’s EPO suspension, how EPO works, testing limits, and what’s fair punishment. They also discuss illegal streaming and the ESPN+ rollout, future matchmaking and divisions, the economics of fighter pay and stardom, and branch into broader topics like Amazon/Bezos, social media, comedy process, and pop culture.
Key Takeaways
Size and natural weight class matter more than fans often admit.
Rogan and Schaub highlight how Poirier’s physicality at 155 overwhelmed Holloway despite Max’s volume, and how Adesanya, Gastelum, Romero, and others show that being ‘the right size’ or truly disciplined for a division is critical to power, durability, and longevity.
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Interim belts are masking a structural need for more weight classes.
They argue that divisions like 165 lbs would better accommodate fighters stuck between 155 and 170, who are either cutting dangerously or undersized; instead, the UFC has layered on interim titles that don’t solve the underlying size-distribution problem.
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EPO use is a high-level, dangerous form of cheating that changes training itself.
Discussing TJ Dillashaw, they note EPO doesn’t just give more cardio on fight night—it lets athletes recover faster, train harder, and get extra rounds in, vastly compounding its advantage while introducing serious health risks like thickened blood and stroke.
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USADA’s testing menu has blind spots, and testing everything is expensive.
Rogan reveals that EPO isn’t tested for every time due to cost, which shocks Dana White in a separate conversation; they debate whether retroactively testing old samples and expanding panels is worth the millions versus simply paying fighters more.
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Illegal streaming is widespread and may actually boost fighter visibility.
Schaub describes ESPN+ ordering failures and being bombarded with pirated links, noting younger fans see $80 as prohibitive and stream by default; Rogan suggests while this hurts PPV revenue, it may help grow fighters’ popularity and the sport’s fanbase.
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MMA’s current era is talent-dense across multiple divisions.
They frame lightweight, welterweight, and middleweight as ‘murderers’ row,’ with Poirier, Khabib, Ferguson, Gaethje, Usman, Woodley, Adesanya, Whittaker, Romero and others making matchmaking incredibly compelling and title paths extremely hard.
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Controversy and authenticity still drive star power in combat sports and comedy.
From Jones and Adesanya’s trash talk to McGregor–Khabib, from The Rock/Will Smith’s social media to Louis C. ...
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Notable Quotes
“Stylebender’s face looked like he was allergic to shellfish.”
— Joe Rogan
“There’s never been a better time to be a UFC fan. It is murderers’ row.”
— Brendan Schaub
“EPO’s not a gateway drug… that’s some black belt–level shit.”
— Brendan Schaub
“I don’t know who’s going to beat Khabib.”
— Joe Rogan
“When guys get that boatload of money, we can’t get them to fight. This sport’s too hard.”
— Brendan Schaub
Questions Answered in This Episode
How should MMA scoring be reformed to value rounds where a fighter is badly hurt or nearly finished more than 10–9, without making comebacks mathematically impossible?
Joe Rogan and Brendan Schaub spend the episode breaking down the recent UFC card featuring Dustin Poirier vs. ...
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Given the risks and structural incentives, is it realistic to expect elite fighters not to use advanced PEDs like EPO when testing is selective and careers are short?
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Would adding a 165-pound division and restructuring weight classes meaningfully reduce dangerous weight cuts, or just create more belt-chasing and chaos?
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At what point does widespread illegal streaming force the UFC and other sports to radically change their pricing and distribution models?
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How much should past misconduct (like Dillashaw’s EPO use or Louis C.K.’s behavior) permanently limit someone’s career, and what constitutes a fair path back?
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Transcript Preview
Let's go live.
(whistles)
5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And yee-haw. Brendan Schaub.
What's up, dog?
Did you buy those shoes yourself?
Yeah, I bought these.
Just wanted to check.
A little too much flair for you?
(Blows out air) Confident-
It's summer, bro.
... confident move. Like, you got the tight pants around the ankles.
Yeah.
Just riding high enough to see the Gucci shoes.
Yeah.
I get it, bro.
Gucci denim, bro.
I get it.
What's up, bro?
I get it. (laughs)
(laughs)
It works. It works. (laughs) You can pull it off.
You were making fun of me going, "You..." (laughs) Yeah.
(laughs)
Yeah. I was, I was, I was saying like, "Yeah, I bet you girls like these." You're like, "Yeah, girls also like dick though, man."
(laughs)
Good point. Legit point, sir.
It's true. It's true.
It's so true. Dude, how about these fights? Let's get into them. Oh my God, how about these fights? How about I almost didn't see them and I texted you during the broadcast.
Yeah.
The ESPN+ thing was a nightmare, man.
Yeah, they had some hiccups. Yeah.
That'd be an understatement.
Yeah. That- that-
It d-
... that has happened before, right? With digital stuff. Digital stuff, I think, it's hard.
It is. In 2019, though?
Mm-hmm.
Especially with ESPN though. That's where I wa- I was just shocked. And me being like a super fan, I had to figure it out. But you know how, oh, how I had to figure it out? 'Cause it didn't work on any platform. So... And it's a hiccup where you couldn't order it off the app, so you had to close the app, order it from a desktop, then shut down something, then go to your TV. It was a nightmare.
(Whistles)
But that didn't work for me. And then I was like, "All right." And then I slowly was missing the first fight. I'm like, "Man, I gotta figure stuff out." And then I tweeted out I was having problems and 2,000 savages sent me links to legal streams.
Legal or illegal?
Illegal.
Illegal. But of course you didn't watch those illegal streams.
I didn't, Joe.
Good.
And I'm glad you pointed it out. I did not, but if I were going to-
Would it be awesome?
... it was awesome and clear.
Was it in HD?
It was HD.
Wow.
And it had zero problems.
Well-
If I was going to.
... I'm glad you didn't because they could track you, that face recognition software.
They could tr- They could definitely track me. It's a huge problem.
Well, it was definitely a huge problem for the first event. Um, I don't know, uh, I don't know how many people downloaded it and did it, but I bet they probably didn't see the number coming. It was a big fight. Those two fights were huge. I mean, first of all, something happened, um, I think, within the last year or so for Max Holloway, where like when Max Holloway's face goes up on the screen-
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