Is the video of Joe Rogan saying he's considering withdrawing from commentary for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fight at the White House true? No, it's not true: the video was flagged as "Contains AI-generated content." Rogan did criticize the event on his podcast, saying he disliked the idea of an outdoor fight, but he didn't say he was considering withdrawing from commentary. There are no credible news reports to support the rumors of his planned withdrawal.
The claim appeared in a video uploaded on May 29, 2026, by the TikTok account @arthur.gossip (archive available here) with the following description:
It's no wonder Joe Rogan can't get over the idea of hosting a UFC event at the White House. #fyp #foryoupage #tiktok #ufc #joerogan
Here's what a screenshot of the video posted on TikTok looked like at the time of writing:
Image source: @arthur.gossip TikTok post.
Here's what the video looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
THIS IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
The video is tagged with "The author indicated that the video was created using AI," as shown by the red circle in the lower left corner of the screenshot below:
The audio recording, presumably belonging to Rogan, appears to be generated by artificial intelligence, as the words don't quite match his facial expressions. His voice is unnatural and expressionless, further suggesting that the video was created by AI.
The online detection tool DetectVideoAI rated the video as 48% likely to be AI-generated, but gave it a rating of "no obvious signs of AI generation detected," as shown in this screenshot:
Image source: DetectVideoAI.
The online threat detection tool Hive Moderation estimated the probability that the video was AI-generated at 28.5%, and the probability that the speech was also AI-generated at 21.2%, as shown in this screenshot:
Image source: Hive Moderation.
Rogan is a regular UFC commentator, and his appearance at this event was planned. He discussed the UFC fight on the May 27, 2026, episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast, telling guests, former UFC fighter Josh Thomson and UFC referee "Big" John McCarthy, that he wasn't looking forward to the outdoor fight. A search of the episode's transcript on the JRE MMA Show YouTube channel (archived here) for the keywords "refusal to comment" reveals that he never uttered the quotes attributed to him in the TikTok video, as seen in this screenshot:
Image source: Video posted by @JREMMAShow on YouTube.
Rogan's White House speech begins at 2:28:42:
The White House situation is weird. I don't like it. I don't like the idea of fighting in the street at all. Well, there are problems with that. It's June in Washington, and we checked last time, on this same day last year, it was 100°. Yeah. Oh yeah. That's damn hot. And then there's the light. Oh yeah. Yeah. Light. Light attracts bugs. What about dehydration? Oh yeah. Yeah. Bugs are a big problem.
At the 2:33:08 mark, Rogan is asked if he will be there, and he answers in the affirmative:
Yes. Yes, I'll be there. Supposedly. Supposedly. If the bomb doesn't go off by then, who the fuck knows? This world has gone mad.
Lead Stories conducted a keyword search on Google News (archive here) and Yahoo! News (archive here) and found reports of his podcast comments expressing concerns about holding the fight outdoors, but no corresponding news reports suggesting he was considering withdrawing from commentating on the UFC fight. Had Rogan made such a statement, major news outlets would have reported it due to the timing and high-profile nature of the event, which was held at the White House.