JRE MMA Show #172 with Gable Steveson

Joe Rogan (0:03)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

Gable Steveson (0:06)

Trained by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

Joe Rogan (0:12)

All right, what's happening? Pleasure to meet you, man.

Gable Steveson (0:14)

How are you?

Joe Rogan (0:15)

Great, I'm great. When you got a name like Gable, and you're named after Dan Gable, and you go on to win an Olympic gold medal in wrestling, that is kind of-

Gable Steveson (0:24)

That's crazy, right?

Joe Rogan (0:24)

It's kind of prophetic.

Gable Steveson (0:26)

My mom, when I was young, she was trying to find names for me, and she liked Cale Sanderson because Cale was a guy at the time, but she was at a tournament in Iowa with my older brother, and she kept hearing Gable, Gable, Gable, and it was Dan Gable at the time. And, you know, Dan Gable was a huge figure in the Midwest for wrestling, and so she was like, why don't I name you Gable Dan? And the rest was history, which is really crazy, because his whole timeline is my timeline, which is fantastic.

Joe Rogan (0:50)

Except the MMA part.

Gable Steveson (0:51)

That too, which I wish he would have done.

Joe Rogan (0:54)

I think he would have been amazing.

Gable Steveson (0:55)

I think he would have been amazing.

Joe Rogan (0:56)

But it wasn't around, I mean, when he was wrestling.

Gable Steveson (0:59)

Bare Knuckle, maybe. I don't know, do it on the street or something. He could have found a way.

Joe Rogan (1:04)

It's kind of fucked that there's no real professional outlet for actual wrestling.

Gable Steveson (1:10)

It is fucked. And wrestling needs a real way to go out there and be something big. And I think they have a really good one now with RAF, if you haven't heard about it. Yes, I have. It's American Freestyle. They're trying, and I think they're trying really well. And I think it's going to come to a point where, how do you make matchups continue? Because wrestling gets to the point where, and fighting in a lot of the sports, you can get to the point where maybe you draft a guy, and fighting, there's a next big thing. There's the next guy out there that you can kind of create. And with wrestling, they're trying to create an atmosphere of how can you create that person. And I like it, and I think it might work, and hopefully it keeps going the way it needs to go.

Joe Rogan (1:46)

It would be interesting if the problem is MMA is so huge now, and people kind of associate wrestling with either MMA or pro wrestling now. Those are the two things that they think of. And I think it's one of those things like soccer, where soccer should be huge in America. It's huge all over the world. It's a very exciting sport, but nope.

Gable Steveson (2:09)

You know it's crazy how popular soccer players are.

And I feel like in America, we have so many sports that like we can't hit that market for soccer. And I think that might be the biggest case why. Because if you go overseas, Ronaldo's paid $500 million. And if he scores a goal, he gets a million dollars a goal or something. So he's out here doing bicycle kicks. But it's like we have so many professional sports that LeBron James is our biggest athlete. But even then, I think it's at a point where some people see LeBron and you know, it's not like the crazy wow factors. If you saw a soccer player in Italy or Spain, it'll be like, man, it's him.

Joe Rogan (2:45)

Right. Well, they have less sports though, right?

Gable Steveson (2:49)

I think so.

Joe Rogan (2:49)

Italy.

Gable Steveson (2:50)

I think Italy got like basketball, soccer.

Joe Rogan (2:52)

Well, they're not really known for basketball though. Soccer's big. Boxing. There's a lot of boxers come out of Italy. But other than that.

Gable Steveson (2:59)

Rome.

Joe Rogan (3:00)

Yeah.

Gable Steveson (3:03)

They got a couple of fighters. But other than that, I think we're kind of at a halt with creating that big guy for America.

Joe Rogan (3:13)

Well, it's just strange to me because wrestling itself is such an exciting sport. It really is very exciting to watch and everybody understands it. It's not complicated.

Gable Steveson (3:25)

I really think everyone understands it to a certain extent.

Joe Rogan (3:28)

But they could learn the points and all the other stuff.

Gable Steveson (3:31)

Have you ever wrestled?

Joe Rogan (3:32)

Yeah. Wrestling in high school. Just one year. I was doing Taekwondo at the same time. Because I was doing Taekwondo and I couldn't do both of them at the same time.