Joe Rogan reveals ‘terrible’ health scare that led him to urge Brendan Schaub to retire

Brendan Schaub had just suffered a first-round knockout loss to Travis Browne at UFC 181. That defeat marked the fourth time ‘Big Brown’ had been knocked out during his 10-5 professional MMA career.

To make matters worse, Rogan says his friend was also being knocked out regularly in training sessions. On his podcast, Rogan recently said: “For me, the hardest one was [Brendan] Schaub, because Schaub didn’t wanna quit. The thing about Brendan, people don’t know, is how many concussions he took outside of the fights.

“You see the fights, but he used to spar with Shane Carwin, man… Brendan Schaub and him used to spar all the time, and he would get knocked out all the time. He would get concussions all the time. He got a concussion days before he fought Ben Rothwell, he got a concussion days before he fought [Minotauro] Nogueira. Like, he was getting concussions all the time in the gym.

“So I knew about all that s— too and I was seeing the effects. I was like: ‘You’ve got to get out now! If you don’t get out now there’s no happy ending.’ There’s no happy ending for the guy that gets knocked out a lot. It’s terrible.”

Joe Rogan gets emotional discussing Daniel Cormier’s career

Rogan’s comments on Schaub came just after he shared his thoughts on the end of Daniel Cormier’s fighting days.

The two have known each other for a long time, and Rogan was open about how difficult it was to watch his friend take losses inside the Octagon.

He became visibly emotional while talking about Cormier’s knockouts against Jon Jones and Stipe Miocic.

“It’s real hard when you watch your friends get beat up. Real hard. It was real hard watching Cormier when Jones beat him up. That was hard. The Stipe one was hard, especially the one where Stipe KO’d him against the cage. It’s just hard.

“Because you know them. You know them as human beings. You know what that’s going to do to them. It’s f—— devastating. It’s like a loss. It’s like you lost a family member or you lost a dog. It’s hard. I start crying.”