Joe Rogan to get new broadcast partner in 2017?
The UFC was bought recently by WME-IMG. When you spend four billion dollars on something, you can make some changes….
The UFC was bought recently by WME-IMG. When you spend four billion dollars on something, you can make some changes. There were layoffs of perhaps 15% of the company, and a plan to realize a return on the massive investment.
The changes apparently extend all through the organization.
Note from Meltzer regarding TV negotiations. Networks want to remove hype master Rogan/Goldberg style of announcing, UFC willing to change
— Fight Ghost (@Fight_Ghost) November 29, 2016
Joe Rogan brings a central element to the unique look at feel of the UFC – part rock concert, part sports event, part alarming natural disaster of the sort that goes viral on the social network.
Rogan said before the sale that if UFC president Dana White was out, he was too. But White stayed on under the new regime, and Rogan has too. He is reportedly burned out by the constant, grinding travel, and thus has begged off commentating international events, but is contracted to work domestic shows at least through July.
White recently appeared on Sportsnet’s Tim & Sid and said he was working on a dream team with Rogan and … someone not named Mike Goldberg.
This has been my dream to assemble this dream team of commentating and I’ve wanted this guy for years and I’m working on it and it’s going to happen, said White as transcribed by Mike Johnston for Sportsnet.
White would not name the figure, but he clearly holds Rogan in the highest esteem.
Joe Rogan, in my opinion, is the greatest to ever do it, said White. The greatest ever to call fights. HBO is very cocky and arrogant in their [boxing] production, but they deserve to be; they do it well and everything else. But Joe Rogan is the greatest to ever call fights in a combat sport.
White did not say how Goldberg would fit into the dream arrangement.