MMA analyst Luke Thomas has offered a sobering assessment of Joe Rogan‘s diminishing relevance, suggesting the podcast giant’s political alignment and lack of preparation have significantly eroded his once-unassailable position in mixed martial arts and broader culture.
Speaking on The Vanguard, Thomas noted that Rogan served as “the cultural ambassador of MMA to the world” from roughly 2005 to 2015, a role he performed exceptionally well. However, since then, it’s been “a little bit of like a slow bleed,” with Rogan becoming known for other things beyond the sport that made him famous.
The criticism extends beyond politics into Rogan’s actual work. Thomas observed that Rogan simply doesn’t have “the bandwidth to follow the sport with the kind of keen detail required to do that job” anymore. He contrasted Rogan’s approach with other UFC commentators like Laura Sanko, who “do like an insane amount of homework,” making “the difference pretty stark.”
The host pointed to a telling example: watching Rogan interview the director of a UFO documentary where “it was just so clear that Rogan hadn’t done his homework. He was unprepared. He clearly hadn’t even seen the movie they were talking about.” This lack of preparation appeared particularly damning given that UFOs and conspiracy theories were topics that originally built Rogan’s audience.
Thomas emphasized the challenge of maintaining expertise while producing “multiple three-hour interviews a week,” saying it’s “very difficult to do if you want to do it in a particularly informed and interesting way.” He noted that active study is required to keep up with the rapidly evolving sport, and Rogan simply doesn’t appear to be putting in that work anymore.
The discussion also touched on what Thomas called the “Rogansphere”—a proliferation of YouTube channels dedicated to dissecting everything in Rogan’s universe. This ecosystem, once protective of Rogan, is now “pulling on strings and seeing where they go,” with the “Saudi Arabia comedy festival” contributing to what appears to be a universe “falling into a little bit of disrepair.”
Perhaps most significantly, former allies in comedy are now openly criticizing Rogan. Comedians like Andrew Santino and Bobby Lee, who once benefited from Rogan’s platform, are now taking shots at him. As one host put it, they’re essentially saying they don’t have to “pretend you’re not a control freak” or “pretend that your jokes are funny and that you’re not a dumb hack.”
Thomas suggested that within the MMA industry itself, Rogan maintains “most favored nation status forever,” and that community will be “the last people to abandon” him. However, even there, complaints about his performance as an analyst are becoming more common, even if personal affection remains.
The broader cultural reckoning extends to Rogan’s comedy credentials, with analysts noting he was never considered the comedic talent among his contemporaries like Doug Stanhope, Patrice O’Neal, or Bill Burr, but rather “built his empire either with it or around it or used his empire to build up the comedy brand.”