Rogan Refused To Voice ‘Mind-Numbing’ Commentary For UFC Video Game

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Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) color commentator Joe Rogan will not be a part of EA Sports upcoming “UFC 4” video game. Instead, those duties will fall to fellow cage callers Jon Anik and Daniel Cormier, who are fixtures at most of the promotion’s ESPN+ fight cards.

Probably because Rogan is filthy rich and can afford to skip out on jobs he doesn’t feel like doing. And according to Creative Director Brian Hayes, this started with UFC 3, when EA was forced to splice together existing clips after Rogan balked at his request to record new dialogue.

“He hasn’t been shy about saying this on his own podcast; like, he hates doing it,” Hayes told GameSpot. “If you’re not a person that [can] mentally get into that space, then I can see how it could be a very, you know, challenging, potentially mind-numbing experience for a certain type of individual.”

Rogan started scaling back his commentating duties after the FOX producers tried to turn him into a “sports guy.” In recent years, the longtime funnyman (and enemy of the Westboro Baptist Church) has increased the value of his brand outside UFC, to the tune of $100 million.

“He was open with us from from the very beginning that he hated his experience of doing voiceover on previous iterations of other UFC games, and things were no different for us,” Hayes said. “He hated doing voiceover on these games as well. That has nothing to do with with us in particular, or, you know, our games versus other games. He just does not like sitting in a booth reading lines for hours at a time.”

He does, however, like sitting in a booth talking to weirdos for hours at a time.