UFC 268: How Rose Namajunas made fight interviewer Joe Rogan cry
Joe Rogan has been interviewing UFC fighters for 20 years — but only one has ever brought him to tears. And she happens to be among the most ruthless women in UFC.
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So you ask UFC champ Rose Namajunas how it feels to make Joe Rogan cry?
After all, this is no small thing.
Especially given Rogan, that famed fight commentator and podcaster to some 11 million people, has spent almost 20 years inside steel cages across the planet interviewing who knows how many warriors, winners, champions, even the beaten, bloodied and vanquished — yet only once shed tears.
Specifically, when holding a microphone up to Namajunas in April.
Back when the diminutive Denver slugger, a fighter who had already won, then lost the women’s strawweight crown, went and earned it back once more in the most spectacular of ways — by head kicking Chinese monster Zhang Weili right out of her consciousness.
Which is how it goes with the Ballad of Thug Rose.
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This 52kg question mark who plays piano, attends church, journals, grows vegies in a community garden and just happens to be among the baddest women to ever enter cages for cash.
“An artist,” is how Namajunas describes herself, right before predicting a finish for her re-match with Weili at UFC 268 this Sunday.
“Punch her in the face,” Namajunas says. “Then take her back and choke her out.”
All of which, combined, is what gives us fight fans the feels.
Quizzed on what it is about her fighting style, and fight full stop, that brings a guy like Rogan to tears, she says: “I guess, I don’t approach fighting the same way most people do.
“I take an artistic approach.
“So maybe that’s why?
“Because the definition of art, it’s a skill or craft you really hone to emotionally move people. And that’s exactly what I’m doing fighting.”
Speaking about his interviewing of Namajunas after the Weili win, Rogan said on his podcast recently: “It was this amazing thing.
“They give her the title and … when I’m talking to her, she’s emotional, she’s crying — I’m crying.
“I cried. I totally cried.
“This is the first time I ever cried during an interview.”
And why?
“It’s someone trying to overcome all the obstacles that are in play when you’re trying to be great,” he said.
Then soon after: “There’s nothing about her that’s aggressive, nothing brutish.
“When she won the title first time, when I was interviewing her one of the things she was saying was we need to be better people.
“She had this message while I was interviewing her.
“In the cage. After winning a fight. ‘We have to be nicer to each other’ – that was her message.”
Which is why this Sunday inside Madison Square Garden, on a blockbuster card boasting headliner’s Kamaru Usman and Colby Covington, plus the lightweight banger that is Justin Gaethje versus Michael Chandler, Thug Rose could conceivably steal the show.
That, and make people feel.
“And it’s weird, man,” Namajunas concedes.
“Really cool, but weird.
“I sometimes don’t like taking credit for it. I feel like … ah, I dunno, very humbled. Flattered.
“Everyone is like ‘you’re awesome’ and I’m ‘ah, stop saying that’.
“I dunno. It’s really cool but it can be embarrassing if that makes sense.”
It does.
Still, what was it like to see Rogan so visibly moved by a moment that was effectively you kicking another woman’s lights out?
“That’s insane,” the champ agrees.
“I mean, he’s seen a lot of crazy stuff.
“He’s watched more fights than I have, and I’m a fighter. So for me to stick out like that over the course of, ever since I was born the UFC was invented.
“It’s wow … as big an accomplishment as being the UFC champion.”
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Originally published as UFC 268: How Rose Namajunas made fight interviewer Joe Rogan cry
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