Joe Rogan: An Average Wrestler Would Knock Floyd Mayweather Out

Joe Rogan is a long time UFC commentator, comedian and genrally opinionated type of guy. The thing is, most of Rogan’s opinions are based on a good amount of knowledge on his part. He is a studied Jiu Jitsu student, has a kickboxing background and has been involved in the sport for a long time now.

Ever since the good old days of watching Rogan argue with hecklers on youtube, or his deep insight in to think tanks, I’ve been a big Joe Rogan fan. Rogan’s latest role will see him ‘Question Everything’ on SyFy, a show starting Wednesday July 24th at 10PM ET.

Rogan recently did a Q+A with Inked Magazine, to discuss MMA and it’s evolution, and had some pretty interesting things to say regarding the age old MMA vs. Boxer debate:

“MMA for sure is more of a realistic contest, more of a realistic test as far as using the body in martial arts competition. Although not considered a martial art, boxing is really a martial art. It’s a very limited martial art as long as you agree to just box. It’s only hands. There are no kicks; there are no takedowns. It’s effective in competition, but in an actual physical fight against someone who’s just a wrestler, you’re going to get killed. “

Now while Boxing is one of my all time favorite sports (in history, because it died after the 80’s), I still agree with what JR says here. It’s a more complete style of fighting than just straight up pugilism.

“”Floyd Mayweather would get killed by an average college wrestler. There would be no competition. If you took Floyd Mayweather today and made him fight against your average college wrestler, that college wrestler is going to shoot on him, pick him up, drop him on his head, and knock him out. There’s nothing that Floyd can do about it. He’s going to get knocked out by getting slammed on his head. A judo guy would do the same thing to him. A jujitsu guy would strangle him, no question about it.”

While I completely agree with the above statement, and Randy Couture proved it against James Toney, we are yet to see a clean transition from boxer to MMA fighter. The truth of the matter is; If you could teach a boxer to be able to wrestle and grapple, he would probably be amazing. He could win a fight wherever it went, the only problem is that boxers train three to five times a week, intensely. Their routines become like breathing or smelling, just natural.

It is very hard to break that routine with TDD, or offensive grappling. I would be very interested in seeing, if it ever does happen, a pro boxer coming to the UFC. Not a freakshow like Toney, a complete athlete that is able to make that transition.

Until then, we are limited to imagining Ronda Rousey slamming Mayweather Jr. around like a rag doll.