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Don’t look or listen for Joe Rogan outside the octagon calling the action at the upcoming Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event in Montreal. He won’t be there. In fact, don’t expect to see him in Canada anytime soon.
When one of his two guests on his Saturday, March 22, podcast mentions UFC 315 at the Bell Centre on May 10, the host declares he’s not attending.
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“I don’t go to Canada anymore. I don’t,” he says, shaking his head as he looks at Brendan Shaub, who replies, “Nor should you.”
Rogan, who also didn’t attend January’s UFC 297 in Toronto, then tells the studio he’d “rather go to Russia” as he and Shaub share a laugh.
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“When they become the U.S., you never know,” Gordon Ryan chimes in.
Rogan doesn’t think that will happen and that it’s “so crazy” to suggest Canada become the 51st state, as U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly stated amid the cross-border trade war.
“I had a conversation with Trump about it,” Rogan says. “He goes: ‘I started calling him Governor Trudeau just for fun, but a lot of people are saying good idea. Maybe it is a good idea!’”
It wasn’t the only time during the three and a half hour show that Canada came up during their banter.
While chatting about a French legislator’s demand last week that the U.S. return the Statue of Liberty to France, Rogan says, “It’s stupid that we hate France, I don’t get it, and it’s stupid we hate Canada, too, I don’t get that either.”
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Rogan had previously defended the Canada-U.S. friendship and called the continental beef “stupid” on a March 14 episode.
“Canada needs to get their s— together,” Schaub says from off-camera.
Rogan admits he doesn’t know how Canada’s electoral system works but calls it “squirrelly.”
The former Fear Factor host then pivots to how Canadians are “losing rights left and right,” citing the 2022 trucker convoy in Ottawa as an example of “full-on communist bulls—.”
Schaub then claims some people are still in jail due to their involvement in the weeks-long protest movement, and Rogan claims that authorities froze bank accounts of individuals who “only donated to the truckers.”
“It was kind of when a lot of people woke up,” Rogan and his guests agree.
Federal officials have repeatedly stated that no private persons had accounts frozen as a result of donations to the cause, and no persons involved remain incarcerated. Organizer Pat King was sentenced to three months of house arrest earlier this year. Verdicts for event leaders Tamara Lich and Chris Barber are delayed.
The studio foursome concede that Canadians are exceedingly “nice and polite… until they’re not.”
“But it’s easy to get them thinking ‘This is the right thing to do, eh’” Rogan says in a generic Canadian accent. “And the next thing you know.”
The conversation quickly veers off to a conversation about taking DMT, a strong psychedelic drug, and using a laser pointer to see the Matrix, as depicted in the 1999 Keanu Reeves film.
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