JRE MMA Show #123 with BJ Penn

Joe Rogan (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience. Ladies and gentlemen, the future governor of Hawaii, BJ Penn.

BJ Penn (0:20)

What's going on, Joe?

Joe Rogan (0:21)

What's happening, brother? Good to see you.

BJ Penn (0:22)

Good to see you, man.

Joe Rogan (0:23)

You're dedicated to this, man. I need a shirt.

BJ Penn (0:26)

You got it.

Joe Rogan (0:27)

I need one. I need to wear a pen for governor.

BJ Penn (0:29)

Thank you.

Joe Rogan (0:29)

If I wear it in Hawaii, will I get mugged? Will they attack me and duct tape me and throw me in the back of a police van?

BJ Penn (0:34)

They'll cheer you on, and then you got to tell them, are you guys registered?

Joe Rogan (0:39)

How is it going? What is it? First of all, what made you decide? It was the COVID lockdowns, right? That made you decide?

BJ Penn (0:45)

You know what? That's the, you know, people ask me, they go, would you be running for office if this pandemic didn't happen? And I tell them all the same thing. I say, this is the straw that broke the camel's back. I've always noticed the problems here with the economy, how anti-business they are, how...

We've all, since I was in high school, we've always been in last place, our education, you know? So, yeah.

Joe Rogan (1:08)

When you say anti-business, like, how are they anti-business?

BJ Penn (1:11)

As far as with the regulations, it takes so long. You know, you go to the planning department and they hold you up for another eight months. And it's just, you know, the taxes are so high. We got the highest, the highest state income tax.

Joe Rogan (1:25)

What is the state income tax in Hawaii?

BJ Penn (1:27)

Um, what is, I don't think, I don't got the exact number right now, but we talk about that. Yeah, we talk about that often.

Joe Rogan (1:35)

Well, I think California is like 13 something, 13 plus percent. There's even talk there about raising it up.

You know, it's, it's, it's a shame that you feel that everything is that bad, that you really, you feel called to do it. But I know you, and I know you wouldn't do this unless you really felt like there was a need for change. You're not a guy that, like, wants to be running the government. You're a guy who just doesn't want to be fucked with and pushed around. And when you see, but you consider your people, your friends, your family, your neighbors, getting their businesses fucked over and getting, getting locked out of work and having regulations put in place to make difficult, make it difficult to start a business in the first place.

So what would you do different in terms of like, what are they doing? Like you're saying like planning and regulations, like what is that about? Is that about concerns for the environment because you're on an island? Like, what is that?

BJ Penn (2:32)

I don't know why they're just so slow. They're just so slow with that stuff.

Joe Rogan (2:37)

Do you think it's just inefficient or you think maybe they're overwhelmed? Like, what do you think it is?

BJ Penn (2:42)

I think inefficient. And I think, you know, let's just take, I see this happen a lot when they, when they start regulating something. I mean, here we were doing MMA in Hawaii.

It got, you remember how big MMA got?

Joe Rogan (2:56)

Rumble on the Rock, son.

BJ Penn (2:57)

Yeah.

Joe Rogan (2:57)

I remember you put on your own promotion. That was fantastic.

BJ Penn (3:00)

Oh, thank you.

Joe Rogan (3:00)

Come on, man. That was like, in the early days of MMA, Rumble on the Rock was classic, man.

BJ Penn (3:05)

That was something.

Joe Rogan (3:05)

You had some fucking great fights.

BJ Penn (3:07)

We did, we did. We had Tank Cabot, we had everybody in there.

Joe Rogan (3:10)

You had great fights. As far as like, a lot of times, unfortunately with like smaller promotions, when they try to branch off away from the UFC, they can't get top tier talent. You know, you get guys that are on the way out or you get guys that maybe couldn't compete with the best of the best.

But Rumble on the Rock was this shit, dude.

BJ Penn (3:29)

It was.

Joe Rogan (3:29)

How many did you do? You do two?

BJ Penn (3:31)

No, we had a bunch of Rumble on the Rocks, actually.

We must've did. I think we had five or six of them, but you know what happened? Elite XC came in, bought everybody up, except for King of the Cage, they didn't sell. And then they went down and they crashed everybody's car. It was almost like it was a, not a, let's send these guys in to buy everybody and crash everybody.