Joe Rogan on Thursday walked back what he now says was a falsehood he reported on his podcast and said he “felt obligated to tell everybody” it was not factual.
On his his “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, Rogan recently said heavyweight champion Jon Jones is rumored to be seeking $30 million to fight interim champ Tom Aspinall, “and the UFC is going to pay it, hopefully. I hope they pay it.”
Jones (28-1 MMA, 22-1 UFC) has been dismissive of Aspinall (15-3 MMA, 8-1 UFC) and wants to be paid handsomely for a title-unification bout. Despite his reluctance to fight Aspinall next after he finished Stipe Miocic this past November at UFC 309, Dana White guaranteed that the fight will happen this year.
But after Rogan went public with the $30 million number he now says was merely a rumor, it caused enough of a ripple effect that UFC CEO Dana White reached out to Rogan to refute the claim.
“I had heard a rumor that Jon Jones wanted $30 million to fight Tom Aspinall. And I did hear that rumor. And I did hear that the UFC said yes,” Rogan said on his latest podcast. “But that’s not true. Dana contacted me and said that rumor is bullsh*t. So I felt obligated to tell everybody that was a fake rumor. … We did that podcast two weeks ago; I don’t remember who told me that.”
In the wake of admitting to reporting the rumor and retracting it, Rogan now said he thinks the MMA collective – the UFC brass, Aspinall’s side, the media, presumably – should give Jones space to decide what he wants his next move to be, rather than speculating and, perhaps, putting pressure on him to make a move.
“Apparently Jon is thinking about retiring,” Rogan said. “… He should think about it. Give the man all the time he wants. He can fight whenever he wants to fight. That’s Jon Jones – he’s the GOAT. So leave him alone. If he decides one day to come back and he comes back and he wants to fight Tom Aspinall for the heavyweight title … The question is, how long are you allowed to hold onto that title before they start having that conversation?”
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This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Joe Rogan retracts ‘bullsh*t’: ‘I felt obligated to tell everybody that was a fake rumor’ about Jon Jones
