On episode #2487 of The Joe Rogan Experience, host Joe Rogan sat down with Action Bronson, and the conversation eventually turned to the UFC heavyweight division and whether any single athlete can truly claim the Greatest of All Time title.
Rogan’s opened by telling Bronson, “I don’t think there’s a GOAT, a real GOAT in heavyweight because I think there’s times where one guy would have beaten all the other guys.”
Despite that qualifier, he quickly outlined a group of athletes he believes deserve a place in the conversation. Stipe Miocic came up first, with Rogan pointing to his title defense record as the defining factor.
“You got to put Stipe in there because he defended the heavyweight title more than anybody,” Rogan said. “He beat Ngannou when Ngannou was in his prime and got rocked a bunch of times.”
When Bronson said that it was a “crazy match,” Rogan agreed and replied, “So you got to give it to him. He’s always going to be in the GOAT category.”
From there, Rogan moved to Cain Velasquez and Fedor Emelianenko. “Cain, Fedor, of course,” he said. “Fedor is like the real connoisseur, the real hardcore MMA heads, they’re like Fedor is the GOAT,” he explained.
He then argued that Fabricio Werdum is routinely overlooked in this conversation.
“Everybody forgets about Fabricio Werdum,” Rogan said. “Because Fabricio Werdum tapped Cain Velasquez, Minotauro Nogueira, and Fedor,” he continued. “And he tapped Fedor when Fedor was Fedor.”
Rogan emphasized that Werdum’s résumé stacks up with the best heavyweights in history.
“When you look at Fabricio Werdum in his prime, he’s in that range, man,” he said. “He beat Cain Velasquez. He beat Mark Hunt with a flying knee to win the title.”
He continued by stressing the level of competition Werdum faced.
“He beat the best of the best,” Rogan said. “He beat them all and he tapped three of the all-time greats.”
Rogan ultimately placed Fedor slightly above the rest of that group.
“Fedor is a notch above him because Fedor beat him and beat him with ground and pound,” he said. “But then the other guys are Cain. And you always got to think prime Cain against anybody ever, man.”
He closed that thought by describing Velasquez at his peak.
“Prime Cain was just an unstoppable tornado of punches and takedowns,” Rogan said. “No tired, no fatigue…. He’s never going to get tired. He’s going to keep punching you in the face. Top tier wrestling.”
What stands out in that discussion is how little space Francis Ngannou occupied in it. Beyond a brief mention as part of Miocic’s résumé, the man who held the heavyweight title and later left the UFC rather than accept terms he viewed as unfair never entered the GOAT conversation at all.
Ngannou has since been public about his frustrations with the promotion.
“There is a lot of mismanagement that sometimes gets stuff screwed up,” he said. “You see even now, there are a lot of heavyweights out there like Tom Aspinall, he is having trouble with this. I think there is something like that out there, which is not right.”
Whether Rogan’s omission was deliberate or not, the pattern fits. The UFC has gone as far as muting Ngannou’s name at a press conference, and on this episode, one of the sport’s loudest voices ran through the entire heavyweight GOAT debate without once considering him a candidate.
