Joe Rogan wasn’t happy when initially asked to conduct UFC 249 fighter interviews from a distance.As it turns out, Rogan just wasn’t on board with UFC’s plan of making him do interviews from a distance and Daniel Cormier, who joined Rogan on commentary, claimed he “threw a fit” when asked to keep a distance of two yards.In response to Cormier’s comment, Rogan retorted with: “At least they let me do the post-fight interviews in the Octagon.”“You threw a fit,” Cormier replied. “You threw a fit before the show. This is insane, everyone’s been tested, we’re all clean!”“They were going to make me do them from like two yards away,” Rogan added. “We’re all clean. Everyone’s been tested, but they were going to make me do interviews from 50 feet away. I’m like, ‘I can’t, I want to see them, look into their eyes.’”The 249 event seemingly went down without any major concerns for well-being, though, during the lead-up to the event, Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza and two of his cornermen tested positive for COVID-19.After some initial reluctance on calling the event, Rogan and his fellow commentators are reported to have felt quite safe throughout the course of the night.UFC president Dana White has claimed that the promotion’s events and fights will run more smoothly as they continue to go ahead with operating during the pandemic.
White stated: “Yeah, obviously the whole social distancing thing and keeping people away from each other and everything … everybody here was tested.
“The people that are still here, we know are negative. I don’t know. You know? We’re just trying … like I was saying earlier, we’re still figuring this whole thing out. This was the first one, it was a success. Wednesday will be better. Saturday will be better and so on and so forth.”
So far, so good, at least that’s what the consensus is around White’s UFC and perhaps other sports as they look to get back to some form of normality over these coming months.