Joe Rogan believes transgender athletes would get ‘Murdered’ if allowed to fight in the UFC
Joe Rogan believes transgender fighters would get “murdered” competing in the UFC.
Speaking alongside guests Francis Foster and Konstantin Kisin during a recent episode of his popular podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, the longtime UFC commentator was in the middle of discussing diversity recruiting in the armed forces when he considered what things would look like if the UFC were required to abide by similar guidelines and sign transgender athletes to its roster.
“Imagine if the UFC had to have diversity,” Rogan said. “Do you know what a problem that would be? If they had to have like a certain amount of trans folks… If you had numbers you had to achieve, it wasn’t the best fighters, it was just like who can meet certain criteria. There’s gonna be a bunch of people who get murdered” (h/t Newsweek).
“There’s gonna be a certain percentage of people who are there because they’re just awesome and a certain percentage of people that they have to hire in order to meet these DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] standards,” Rogan said as a hypothetical situation for the UFC. “Imagine if the U.K. had one representative that was supposed to be fighting Francis Ngannou, you have one person who’s supposed to step up and fight that guy and it says, ‘Well the right move is to send in a non-binary woman because they don’t get represented in the UFC.’
The debate over trans athletes in competitive sports has been raging on for many years, though there have been very few examples in mixed martial arts. The biggest being trans fighter Fallon Fox. Making her pro debut in 2012, Fox immediately sparked a date within the community after rattling off three straight wins by way of finish. Following her first loss to Ashlee Evans-Smith, the debate largely quieted down with Fox only competing two more times before retiring from the sport in 2014.
However, the debate among fighters and fans was reinvigorated when Alana McLaughlin, a former member of the U.S. Army Special Forces and trans woman, made her MMA debut under the Combate Global banner in 2021. She earned a second-round submission against Celine Provost but has yet to book a second appearance after McLaughlin and the promotion faced severe backlash from the combat sports community.
Former Strikeforce middleweight champion Jake Shields attacked McLaughlin on multiple occasions in the wake of the controversy, speaking out against her, members of the trans community, and their allies on a fairly regular basis via social media.
Do you agree with Joe Rogan’s assessment of trans fighters potentially competing in the UFC?
