Former UFC lightweight contender Kevin Lee gave his opinion regarding the controversy surrounding the famous podcast host Joe Rogan. Rogan had most recently come under fire when a political lobbying effort resurfaced an old compilation of him uttering a racially charged slur.
However, being a part of the UFC for years, the 54-year-old has many MMA fighters supporting him. During UFC 271 pre-fight interview, UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya showed his support.
“First off, let me take this one. Hold up. I’m Black. I can take this one. Look, there’s a lot of c*nts in this game. There are a lot of snakes in this game. I’ve been in this fight game since 2008. Joe Rogan is one of the nicest, coolest, humble motherf*ckers I’ve had the pleasure of working with. Understand that.” said Adesanya
Rogan was reportedly brought to tears when he heard about Adesanya’s kind words.
Recently, Kevin Lee also spoke up in defense of Joe Rogan. ‘The Motown Phenom’ believes that the media painted Rogan into a corner. During a talk with ‘Middle Easy’, Lee expressed his disappointment towards the people who don’t even know who Rogan is and act based on what they see online.
“A lot of these politics, they get played. It’s a real shame. When you don’t take someone for face value and you don’t take them for their word, it’s real easy just for the average person to just cling onto these quick snappy little headlines and stuff like that. It’s a shame that our world has been like this. Especially when you take somebody who’s only ever done good.”
“Even after that whole racism thing, that came up of him saying the N-word a bunch of times. Honestly him opening up and apologizing a lot— which I give him a lot of respect for. Right after that, I heard a show where he had on a lawyer who got out six different black men that were locked up.”
Lee added, “Actions speak louder than words, but the average person doesn’t necessarily see that, they didn’t watch the whole show. They didn’t know that he did this activism for the community. I think you can kind of pick and choose and take people’s stuff out of context. It’s a shame. It makes you kind of hate the sh*t. It makes you like, hate doing it. I’ve been on that wave.”
It seems like Spotify itself is having a hard time manning the situation. They were being quite inconsistent about keeping ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ episodes on the platform. But much of it was due to a technical glitch and not a political stance.
As for Kevin Lee, he is preparing for a clash against fellow former UFC fighter Diego Sanchez. The two will fight under the Eagle FC banner in March.
Lee guested on JRE back in 2019.