Joe Rogan explains jiu-jitsu's 'hardest belt to get to' – and it's not a BJJ black belt
01/10/2025 11:21 AM
UFC icon Joe Rogan has been around the sport of MMA pretty much since its inception and has an incredible knowledge of all of the different martial arts.
Joe Rogan has almost been around the UFC since its creation 32 years ago and has surrounded himself with some of the sport’s biggest and most talented stars.
The UFC commentator’s love for martial arts began when he was a young boy and he even competed at a high level in taekwondo.
Despite that, after scoring a terrifying knockout whilst competing in the National Championships, Rogan quit his martial arts career, stating that he never recovered from seeing how badly he knocked someone out.
Joe Rogan explains why the purple belt is harder to attain than the black belt in Jiu-Jitsu
Taekwondo wasn’t the only martial art that the icon competed in and trained in as he also had experience in Kickboxing and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
In fact, the 57-year-old is a black belt in BJJ having earned it from Jean Jacques Machado’s academy in 2012. As well as that, Rogan was also awarded a 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu black belt from legendary Jiu-Jitsu coach, Eddie Bravo.
With that, Rogan has bizarrely explained why he believes the purple belt is harder to attain than the infamous black belt.
During a recent episode of his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, the commentator spoke to actor, Mel Gibson. During their conversation which lasted over two hours, Gibson revealed to Rogan that his girlfriend is currently training BJJ and is a purple belt.
“Oh, she’s legit, purple belt is basically a black belt, you just need a little more time. If you can get, I always tell all Jiu-Jitsu students, ‘If you can get to purple belt, you are a black belt, you’re gonna be a black belt, you just gotta stay on that path’,” Rogan began to explain.
“I think the purple belt is the hardest belt to get to because it’s just like in the beginning you’re just getting crushed, that’s Jiu-Jitsu, especially for women, it’s so difficult for women because they don’t have the physical strength that the men have.
“By the time you get to purple belt, you have to have real technique and you have to have a real understanding of what’s going on,” he continued.
Joe Rogan claims Jon Jones is once again considering retirement
With Rogan being so close to the action constantly and having built relationships in the sport, oftentimes he gets information regarding upcoming fights or events before they’ve been announced.
That, though, sometimes gets the commentator in hot water, and after recently claiming that Jon Jones is demanding $30m to fight Tom Aspinall in a heavyweight title unification fight, he walked back his claims by admitting he was wrong.
During a podcast episode with Theo Von, Rogan admitted that he can’t remember who told him the information but he has been told by Dana White that it isn’t true.
However, he then went on to tease that Jones is now once again considering retirement instead of fighting Aspinall.
Prior to his title defense against Stipe Miocic this past November, Jones claimed that he would likely retire instead of fighting the Brit and then seemingly changed his mind after the reaction from the fans.
