JRE MMA Show #26 with Big John McCarthy

Joe Rogan (0:01)

Five, four, three, two, one, boom, and we're live.

With the OG of OGs. If there's more of an OG MMA character than you, I don't know who the fuck they would be. There's more, who's, Hoice Gracie and you. That's about as OG as it gets, right?

Big John McCarthy (0:18)

You know what that means?

Joe Rogan (0:19)

What does that mean?

Big John McCarthy (0:20)

You're both fucking old.

Joe Rogan (0:21)

We're all old, yeah, we're old. I was watching, there was, the other day was the 20th anniversary of Dan Henderson's first UFC appearance, and there's me interviewing him afterwards. I'm like, who's that fucking little kid interviewing Dan Hennig? Who's Dan Henderson? Pretending to be Dan Henderson.

Big John McCarthy (0:35)

UFC 12

Joe Rogan (0:36)

Yeah, Dothan, Alabama.

Big John McCarthy (0:37)

Well, you got transferred.

Joe Rogan (0:39)

Yeah, well, we're supposed to go up to Buffalo.

Big John McCarthy (0:42)

Oh, go down to Dothan.

Joe Rogan (0:43)

They canceled it out of New York. New York said, get out of here, and we had to take a puddle jumper plane. Remember all that, Jess?

Big John McCarthy (0:50)

Oh, dude, I remember it very well. I was in court.

Goddamn, I knew I was in trouble.

Joe Rogan (0:55)

Yeah, you were one of the, you were one of the people that I cite all the time for why that stupid reason, that 12 to six elbow, you're the one that just explained it to me, because I couldn't believe that what you're telling me was true, that the reason 12 to six elbows were illegal. Well, just tell the story.

Big John McCarthy (1:12)

The truth of the story is, back, there's so many stories about rules and how they came about, and there's guys claiming things, and it's like, really? Okay, I have paperwork that shows how things came out, and at what time it was, and I still have my computers that I have things written on that we went over stuff. But-

Joe Rogan (1:36)

You have computers from the 90s?

Big John McCarthy (1:37)

Dude, I still have, no, I've got a floppy disk.

Joe Rogan (1:39)

No, you don't.

Big John McCarthy (1:40)

Swear to God.

Joe Rogan (1:41)

You do?

Big John McCarthy (1:41)

Unbelievable, isn't it? Not a damn thing.

Joe Rogan (1:44)

How much can a floppy disk hold? Not even like a megabyte, right?

Big John McCarthy (1:47)

Nothing, nothing. It holds a couple of pages of a document.

Joe Rogan (1:51)

But do you remember when the floppy disk went away? Everybody panicked. What are you doing?

You're fucking taking away the floppy disk? That's outrageous.

Big John McCarthy (1:58)

Where are you gonna put stuff on?

Joe Rogan (1:59)

When Mac got rid of the floppy disk, I remember people were like, these guys are assholes. What are they thinking?

Big John McCarthy (2:05)

But anyways, when the unified rules, what happened was, everyone looks at the UFC and says, oh, when the UFC went to, the first show that was done in New Jersey was the IFC, Paul Smith's show. It was done in September, I wanna say of 1999 Okay, and the UFC went there in November of 1999

And you have to go back and understand the history of what was going on. And this is where I have my issues with people that try to change history and rewrite things. And what was going on was, Semaphore Entertainment Group at the time owned the UFC. That's who you were working for.

Joe Rogan (2:49)

Bob Myrowitz.

Big John McCarthy (2:50)

Bob Myrowitz. Yeah.

Joe Rogan (2:52)

Campbell McLaren.

Big John McCarthy (2:53)

Campbell McLaren was long gone. And I love it.

Joe Rogan (2:55)

By then, by 99

Big John McCarthy (2:56)

Oh my god, yes.

Joe Rogan (2:57)

Yeah. He was there when I came around in 97

Big John McCarthy (2:59)

Yeah, well I think he hired you.

Joe Rogan (3:01)

Yeah. Yeah.

Big John McCarthy (3:02)

And he did some stuff. He comes up with, I'm the co-creator of the UFC.

You know what, let me just ask one question. If you're the co-creator, how come you never owned one bit of it? Doesn't make sense, does it?

Joe Rogan (3:15)

You're calling out Campbell McLaren on this podcast? Hell yes. How dare you?

Big John McCarthy (3:19)

You know what, I'm tired. Why lie? He did things, and I will absolutely give him credit for what he did. Because he was the reason that it actually made it to Pay-Per-View, because Art Davy had gone to everyone. Prime Ticket at the time was a Pay-Per-View provider. Because the Pay-Per-View world back then was about 15 million in the US. It's not like it is now. You were limited. But Prime Ticket was one, HBO was another, and he had gone to all those, and they all turned, no, no, no, no.