Our beloved and dreaded Supreme Dark Lord (PBUH) Voxemort the Malevolent recently turned his baleful gaze upon a certain Joe Rogan, and the results were… well, pretty damned interesting:

As is the norm with His Voxness’s Darkstreams, this one is an hour long, and not everyone has that kind of time, so let me summarise.

Basically, Vox immediately and categorically states that Joe Rogan is indeed a highly skilled martial artist and grants that he certainly has mastery over a number of different styles, including tae kwon do and Brazilian jiu jitsu. He then analyses some footage of Joe Rogan hitting heavy bags and pads, along with some of Mr. Rogan’s history of point-fighting, and concludes that Joe Rogan does not know what real fighting is.

He intersperses his analysis with anecdotes from his own fighting experience in a full-contact martial arts school that engaged in an early style of MMA fighting and which regularly held competitions and tournaments that resulted in Vox, alone, suffering from fourteen different broken bones and at least one knockout.

The reaction from the Rogan FanBoi Club was immediate, and deafening.

The responses seemed to fall under one of about three archetypes:

1. “DUDE JOE ROGAN IS A BJJ BLACK BELT TWICE OVER HE WOULD TAKE YOU DOWN TO THE GROUND AND DESTROY YOU zOMG!!!11!!”
2. “YOU’RE A PUSSY IF YOU DON’T CALL OUT JOE ROGAN AND GO FIGHT HIM!!!”
3. “YOU’VE NEVER FOUGHT IN MMA AND YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO TALK SHIT ABOUT JOE ROGAN!!!”

There was, of course, quite a lot of Gamma sperging in the comments to the chat, but you get the rough idea here.

The problem is that nobody who called out the Supreme Dark Lord (PBUH) for his comments, had actually bothered to listen to what he was saying.

The Dark Lord did not call Joe Rogan a bad martial artist.

He did not argue that Joe Rogan is unskilled, stupid, or fake.

He did not argue that he could easily take Joe Rogan in a real fight – he pointed out, multiple times, that he and Joe Rogan are both over 50 years old, and that he has immense respect for the way that Mr. Rogan keeps himself in such amazing shape.

What he actually said was that Joe Rogan simply has not fought in a real fight. He is a very skilled martial artist – I would argue that Mr. Rogan is highly skilled on the ground, and with his legs, but not with his hands.

To which my response was: “Yeah, Vox is right. What’s the fuss all about?”

All you have to do is watch the video clip that Vox shows. It displays Mr. Rogan throwing kicks against a heavy bag and pads, and also throwing punches against a pad-holder.

It is immediately obvious to anyone who has trained in a serious kickboxing, muay thai, MMA, or even decent Krav Maga, school that Mr. Rogan’s kicks are immensely powerful – but that his technique for protecting himself, both with his legs and his hands, shows that he does not do much hard sparring.

It is an absolute staple of muay thai that when you throw one of those extremely powerful roundhouse kicks – where Thai boxers blast their shin-bones into their opponents like baseball bats, with pretty much the same outcome when the leg hits flesh and bone – you must protect your base foot and side by keeping your opposite hand up near your head.

That is because the standard counter for a muay thai round kick is a step out and around followed by a hard hook to the head on the non-kicking side of your opponent.

That shit really works against opponents who don’t have discipline in keeping their hands up.

It is also an absolute staple of boxing to throw the power hand – your “cross” – with a snap of the hip. You have to pivot your rear foot in order to generate real power from your hip into your right (or left, if you’re a southpaw – I’ve read a book in which a fighting coach argue, with some justification, that all southpaws should be drowned at birth).

And you have to keep your head moving in order to avoid taking damage from counter-strikes.

For all of the power in his hands, Mr. Rogan does not do either of these things.

I would not want to face Mr. Rogan in a boxing match or cage fight. He would beat the shit out of me with ease. But that does not mean that I am unable to analyse his fighting style and find flaws in it.

Why? Because I spent five years training in a truly legitimate martial arts school, where hard sparring was not only encouraged but required.

I don’t pretend to be any sort of good fighter. I’m not. To my deep personal regret, I have not sparred with anything that can hit me back in over 9 months. But I know what it means to take a beating from someone with vastly greater speed, strength, skill, and experience than me. And I know what it means to beat the absolute tar out of someone, who is hitting me back really hard too, and then smile at the end of the round, embrace him as a brother, and go out for a beer with him after the class.

So I have some idea of the difference between tag-fighting, hard sparring, and real fighting. And Vox Day understands the difference far better than I do.

And his basic point is beyond dispute: there is a world of difference between training, and fighting.

You must train in order to be genuinely good at fighting. Training is great. Training is wonderful. Training helps you to form the patterns and skills and fitness and endurance to survive in a real fight.

But the true test of your skill, mindset, willpower, and strength is not on the training mat or in the dojo.

One stern test of these attributes is when the cage is locked and the bell rings and the fight is on.

An even more stern test is when you get into a real bar fight with potentially a dozen or more combatants involved.

The ultimate test of all of these things is no longer really performed anymore, because war has moved beyond the days of massed infantry formations smashing into each other with sword and shield. But, back in those days, in the meat-grinders of the phalanxes and the legions, which did so much to conquer most of the known world, men understood that the only way to test their manhood was through war.

There is no getting away from the fact that Mr. Rogan – for all of his incredible skills – has not done any of these things.

On top of this, the Gamma spergs who bombarded the chat kept droning on and on about how His Voxness would not be able to win against a BJJ black belt of Mr. Rogan’s calibre.

The Supreme Dark Lord (PBUH) had a follow-up to that, too:

Again, this is a long stream, but it is worth listening to or watching in full.

As my good friend and fellow shitlord (and VFM) Last Redoubt said to me in an email, he nearly pissed himself at the phrase, “Brazilian cuddling” – which was precisely my reaction too.

And holy SHIT, did that ever trigger the bejeezus out of the Gammas and the Rogan FanBois.

Of course, they failed completely to understand Vox’s basic points. He was not actually disrespecting BJJ. As he points out repeatedly in that Darkstream, he has immense respect for BJJ grapplers. They are wizards on the ground. They know how to submit you and break your bones in a dozen different ways before you even figure out which way is up.

They are very, very skilled at submitting a man – in very, very specific situations.

As Last Redoubt commented back in 2017 on a related post:

One reason I was never going to rely on jujitsu is my only fighting style was exactly that. It’s great to be able to take one guy down to the ground. Now what about his three buddies?

Exactly.

That’s the thing about BJJ. It is a brilliant martial art in very particular situations. Once you are both down on the ground, BJJ is amazingly effective at nullifying size and strength advantages that your opponents have. Just take a look at this clip of a 4th Dan BJJ black belt taking on a bodybuilder with a full 100lbs weight advantage over him, and an even bigger strength advantage:

But once you get out of those situations – BJJ is useless.

This is not hyperbolic. There are numerous situations where it would not only be stupid to take the fight to the ground, it would be suicidal.

The BJJ approach to someone coming at you with a knife, for instance, is to take him to the ground and roll with him, to submit him.

Let’s just pause for a moment and think through that.

The BJJ approach to someone trying to STAB you is to TAKE HIM TO THE GROUND WHILE HE IS HOLDING A KNIFE.

Anybody who says that you need to get in close to a person holding a knife, has no respect or understanding for the weapon.

A knife is a short, sharp-edged weapon. It is perfectly designed for close-quarters fighting where it cannot be seen easily and cannot easily be defended against.

The absolute LAST thing you want to do is to let something like that get close to your body.

To defend against a knife, you must create distance. You must use longer-ranged weapons – it is trivially obvious that if you put a guy with a knife up against a guy with a stick, or even more hilariously, a guy 20 feet away with a gun, the guy with the knife dies. And you must use your legs, if at all possible, to create distance and separation between you and the dude with the pointy stabbity thing.

BJJ also has some serious shortcomings against styles which think about the transition between standing on your feet, and rolling on the ground.

Most people do not know this, but back in the day, Helio Gracie, one of the original forefathers of BJJ, once fought against Masahiko Kimura – the greatest judoka who ever lived, probably, and whose signature shoulder-lock bears his name. He lost, badly, and had his arm broken in two places.

Why? Because unlike BJJ, which focuses almost exclusively on what happens once you get to the ground, judo is a much more aggressive style which combines trips and throws and grip-fighting with ground-fighting. In that respect, judo is a much more complete art; a BJJ ace might be able to submit you in far more ways once he gets you to the ground, but a judoka is going to grab you and maul you on your feet before he throws you to the ground and then stomps you into a bloody pulp.

Or just look at what Kazushi Sakuraba, the legendary “Gracie Hunter”, did against the Gracie family, who all insisted on pulling guard and trying to get their opponent to engage with them on the ground:

What, exactly, did the Gracies think was going to happen? Did they seriously believe that Sakuraba was just going to willingly join them on the ground for a cuddling session? Instead, he stood on his feet and blasted them with some amazingly creative striking attacks.

In the process, he took out Royce Gracie, who is a real contender for the title of “Most Important Martial Artist Of All Time”, as well as Royler, Renzo, and Ryan.

BJJ works great – right up until it doesn’t anymore.

And then we have the situation where you get into a bar fight or street brawl, where you will be in a one-on-many or many-on-many situation.

What happens then, when you pick out one particular opponent, try to take him to the ground, and grapple with him?

Well, your entire focus will be on him, and on trying to submit him using an armbar, a choke, a leg lock, or some other submission hold.

And the focus of his three best buddies will be to come over and beat your brains out with a chair.

It isn’t very difficult to figure out who wins in that situation. DO. THE. MATHS.

This is going to turn into a 20,000-word rant if I don’t wrap this up, so I’ll leave off by amplifying on two points that Vox made.

First – if you have never taken hard contact, such as a shinbone to the neck, or a foot to the face, or a punch to the face so hard that your nose erupts into a fountain of blood, then you have NO IDEA what it means to fight.

Hell, I have endured all of those things – gladly. I have come back for seconds afterwards. I have been beaten to a pulp for 45 minutes by a 50-year-old Grandmaster who pounded the tar out of me with just his hands and a toothy grin – while surrendering forty pounds to me in body mass and at least 5 inches in height. I have twisted my ankle, badly, in a weapons defence class and seen it swell up to nearly the size of a golf ball – and then done heavy squats two days later, and come back the day after that to a sparring class with my ankle strapped and wrapped up in a wrestling shoe.

And even I don’t know what it means to fight – because I’ve never actually been in a real one.

What separates me from most keyboard warriors who beat their chests about fighting techniques is that I understand and respect the huge difference between training and fighting.

And so too, by the way, does Joe Rogan.

In fact, I am almost certain that if Mr. Rogan listened to Vox’s Darkstreams, once he gets past his initial knee-jerk reactions, he would agree with His Voxness on virtually every point.

And second – there is no foolproof fighting style. I don’t care which style you care to name – BJJ, judo, aikido, Kyokushin karate, kenpo, Kali, Krav Maga, or muay thai. I have studied the latter two and done some very basic grappling. I know that all of these styles have strengths, and weaknesses.

Martial arts are not magic. Martial arts are a series of principles and techniques applied through the human body into the ultimate form of self-expression. That is all.

And martial arts is of absolutely no use against a guy with a gun who understands that there is no way to stop a bullet from 20 feet away.

If you want to study a martial art – great. Wonderful. I sincerely wish you every possible success. Hell, if you want my opinion or help in picking one, just email me and I’ll get back to you with my opinions and ideas.

And if you are ever in my neck of the woods, or I am in yours, and you want to put on some gloves and pads and soft shoes and go a-waltzing Matilda for a few rounds, I would be honoured and privileged to do so – and then go out for a beer with you afterwards.

The ultimate test of your skill, strength, and courage is to get into a cage fight, or a boxing ring, or a muay thai match, or – if you are really hardcore – a street or bar fight. If you have never done these things, then do not criticise those who have, and do not pretend that your martial art could beat theirs. Those men have tested themselves in true combat. If you have not, then you have no idea what it means to feel the true thrill and fear of real fighting.