Joe Rogan has made no secret of his curiosity about PEDs and what athletes could accomplish if the restrictions were removed. On episode #2510 of The Joe Rogan Experience, during a conversation with Canadian arm wrestling champion Devon Larratt, that curiosity turned into an assessment of the Enhanced Games and why the event failed to deliver the kind of spectacle many people expected.
The discussion began with Rogan reflecting on older athletes who had used testosterone replacement therapy to extend their careers. He pointed to former UFC star Vitor Belfort as one of his favorite examples of what can happen when athletes have access to PEDs.
That led to a conversation about what sports might look like if those were openly permitted, eventually bringing the pair to the topic of the Enhanced Games.
Rogan said he was immediately drawn to the concept.
“Well, that’s why I really love this whole idea of doing the Enhanced Games,” he said.
However, he felt the inaugural event fell well short of expectations.
“It didn’t really pan out the way everybody hoped,” Rogan said. “Nobody really won any records other than the one guy in the swimming, but he wore a prohibited suit that lets you swim quicker apparently. I don’t understand swimming.”
According to Rogan, the biggest issue wasn’t the idea itself but the timeline. He argued that elite performances fueled by both training and performance-enhancing drugs take years to develop, not months.
“I was hoping like you’re going to see some freakish superhuman performances,” Rogan said. “But I feel like if that’s going to happen, that’s going to take years.”
He continued by explaining why he believes the expectations surrounding the event were unrealistic.
“I don’t think you would get the kind of gains that these people are hoping to get to achieve like world record super freak human performance unless you’re doing that stuff for a long time,” Rogan said.
Drawing on his own experience with athletic development, he emphasized how long physical adaptations take to build.
“You know as well as anybody that training takes forever,” he said. “Takes to build strength, to build speed, to build endurance. Takes a long time.”
Rogan then challenged the idea that a short cycle of enhancement could produce extraordinary results.
“You think you’re going to get strength in three months?” he asked. “Like you get a little stronger. But you’re not going to get freakish strength for years. It takes years.”
Larratt agreed with the assessment, offering a brief but emphatic response.
“Years. Decades,” Larratt said.
For Rogan, the Enhanced Games was not a flawed concept as much as it was an experiment that arrived too early. His view was that the athletes involved simply had not accumulated the years, or even decades, of pharmacologically assisted training needed to surpass records built over entire careers.
