Joe Rogan to Brendan Schaub: ‘I Don’t See You Beating the Elite Guys’

On a recent episode of the “The Fighter and the Kid” podcast, UFC Heavyweight Brendan Schaub and comedian Bryan Callen were joined by UFC commentator and close friend Joe Rogan.

The three would get started quickly, discussing Schaub’s recent loss to Travis Browne at UFC 181, and Rogan had some tough, yet very honest criticism to share with Schaub.

“This is the reality of it, I worry about your commitment to fighting and where you stand, not your commitment to training, not your commitment to give it your all, I think you have one foot out the door. I think you’re looking at where the future is going to take you and you can’t do this forever, and I think that’s a very dangerous place to be in fighting. And I’ve seen it with a lot of guys, early in the career they’re invulnerable, they’re beasts, they’re monsters, they’re 100 percent focused, fighting becomes their life, it becomes their everything and then somewhere along the line they start thinking ‘how long can I do this? When’s the out time? What’s my exit strategy?'” Said Rogan.

Rogan would then continue on how he feels Schaub’s skill set compares to the elite of the elite.

“The reality of your skill set, where you’re at now, I don’t see you beating the elite guys. I don’t see you beating Cain Velasquez. I don’t see you beating Junior dos Santos. I don’t see you beating Fabricio Werdum. You came into fighting fairly late in life. You’re a good athlete. You’re a big guy, a strong guy and you can do a lot of things because of that. You’re very dedicated and you’re very disciplined and you get s**t done, but there’s a reality of fluidity of movement, of mechanical efficiency of movement that happens when you get a guy who has trained his whole life at a certain aspect of MMA. Whether it’s wrestling, kickboxing, jiu jitsu … there’s a fluidity of their movement that you don’t really have. It’s not that you don’t try hard, that you’re not dedicated, that you’re not disciplined, that you’re not intelligent. There’s s**t that other people can do that you can’t do.”

Rogan continued by asked Schaub how he believes he would fair in a wrestling match against Velasquez. Schaub replied that  ‘people would be surprised,’ Rogan disagreed.

“Really?” said Rogan. “You think so? I think you’d be surprised, I really do. I think he’d f**k you up. I say that as a friend and a guy who loves you. I just think there’s a bridge between you and the best guys in the world and I don’t know if you can cross that bridge.”

Much more discussion would take place as Rogan would continue to arraign Schaub’s skill set , while Schaub defend himself and eventually fired back at Rogan.

Transcription via MMAFighting