Name: Why Wrestler Jordan Burroughs Hasn't Transitioned Into MMA
Uploaded: 2021-01-08T21:30:21.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Why Wrestler Jordan Burroughs Hasn't Transitioned Into MMA' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-01-08. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Why Wrestler Jordan Burroughs Hasn't Transitioned Into MMA' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-01-08. Transcript available.

- The Joe Rogan Experience.
- First of all, I think it's amazing
that no one's talked you into doing MMA.
It's incredible.
- I've been close.
- How close?
- Mostly the lady outside, my wife Lauren.
- Really?
- Is the one that's talked me out of it.
- Really?
- Yeah, bro.
Like when I graduated from college in 2011,
University of Nebraska,
wrestling was still on the brink of,
it was in its infancy of marketing and branding
and really making it a professional career.
So MMA was the new kid on the block
and it was growing and expanding.
And we had a lot of our guys transitioning in,
Henry Cejudo, Ben Askren, Daniel Cormier.
And so I really thought about it.
I was like, okay, I'm gonna wrestle in the Olympics
in London 2012, win the gold,
and then I'm gonna make the transition to MMA.
I'll be 25 years old.
I'll have plenty of time.
And then I met Lauren.
And she's like, listen, you're doing well in the sports.
Stay here, you're comfortable.
It's just a different, it's a different sport,
MMA in comparison to wrestling, but it's a good thing.
- It is a different sport.
And it also has a lot more head trauma.
And there's a lot of things to consider.
- 100%.
That's what I think about all the time.
Listen, I think about going to MMA
until I see a guy like Platinum Mike Perry,
get his whole thing split, nose crooked.
I'm like, eh, I'm good.
It's like in wrestling, you lose, you get taken down, pushed out.
You know, you get pinned.
In fighting, you lose.
You get something broken, choked out, tap.
You know, it's unconscious.
It's a very, very different sport.
Wrestling, it's much, you score as many points as possible,
doing the least damage as possible.
In MMA, I feel like it's different.
It's a shame that there's not more attention put
on the professional, like, at one point in time,
professional wrestling was actual wrestling.
- Yeah, yeah.
- It wasn't like WWE Entertainment.
It was professional wrestling, and it was done for points.
Why can't they do that?
I know they tried to do that a few years back.
There was an organization, I think,
was it Kevin Jackson that was doing it?
- Yeah, yeah.
- Yeah, he was doing something where he was doing
a professional wrestling organization,
but it just didn't catch on for some reason.
But yet, golf is on TV.
- For sure.
- Baseball, and all these things.
- Crazy, bags, bro, cornhole.
I was watching the Cornhole Championships
on ESPN the other day.
I'm like, bro, this is wild.
Like, Cornhole is on ESPN more often than wrestling.
- But isn't that just now,
because there's no crowds and COVID,
and there's all the weirdness,
and there's a lot of shit that's on.
Like, if you follow SportsCenter on Instagram,
like, half the shit they do is like people
in their backyard, like, doing crazy dunks and stuff.
- I think the invention of the internet
has definitely changed the game for our sport.
We are in an epic time where anyone can be famous.
All you need is an iPhone, cell phone, period.
Like, if you can film footage and upload it,
and it's funny, it's inventive, it's disruptive,
like, you have an audience, and people are gonna follow it.
So people that are going viral now, becoming superstars,
aren't even the most particularly talented people in society.
They just have a niche, and they know how
to stay consistent with it.
- Well, sometimes it doesn't even make sense.
Like, something just catches, like, remember the dude
that was on the skateboard doing Fleetwood Mac?
- With the cranberry juice.
- Yeah, like, just for whatever reason,
everybody's like, "That guy looks like he's having fun."
- Get this man a truck, get him more cranberry juice.
- And now he's on, I look, he's always on podcasts,
he's all over the place.
- He's a man.
- He bought a house, he bought a car.
I mean, it's really incredible.
- But that's the beauty of it.
- Yeah.
- That's the beauty of it, is it gives people an opportunity.
There it is right there.
- Yeah, so it was a professional wrestling league
that they established.
And, you know, when people reference what we do,
I call it Olympic wrestling.
Honestly, I don't even call it professional wrestling,
'cause that is kind of an ode to the WWE,
an old time WWF.
So it's a unique thing that we had at this time.
This is Tommy Rollins, Daniel Cormier,
both extremely competitive, both great wrestlers,
Oklahoma State, Ohio State. - What year is this?
- This probably was around '04, '05-ish.
So I was still in high school.
Real pro wrestling, that's right.
So they had different cities across the country
that had their own teams.
It was almost like XFL-esque.
It kind of had that vibe.
- So it's Rulon Gardner.
- Yeah, Rulon Gardner.
- And who's the--
- Tim Johnson, in the middle,
he works for the Big Ten Network and also for ESPN.
He does commentary for the NCAA Championships yearly.
And then the last guy is Nate Carr,
who was a NCAA champ, world medalist.
- And Rulon is another guy that made the transition.
He made the transition in MMA.
- Did he? I didn't know that.
- Yeah, yeah, he fought a bunch of times over in Japan.
And actually-- - That's crazy.
- I think what stopped him was he lost a toe
in a frostbite accident. - That's right.
He's a former Cornhusker.
- Is he? - So we went to the same university
and I got a chance to kind of spend some time with Rulon,
but he was out when I was kind of transitioning in.
And so he's an interesting cat
and he is one of those guys
that's like shrouded in this mystery,
but there's so many like epic stories
about who he was, what he's done, how much he's eaten.
- He's a gorilla, dude.
- Massive, massive man. - In real life,
you see the size of that guy?
- Massive man.
And then obviously him beating Corellon,
which is pretty much considered the most legendary victory
in wrestling history.
That's a weird victory, right?
Because it's like Corellon, all he did was get Corellon to break his grip.
- Yeah. - And it was a new rule, right?
- Yup.
The rules are evolving all the time in wrestling.
So it's one of those rule changes that year in particular,
which wasn't, it didn't translate well to the average fan.
So like the toughest thing about wrestling is that the rules change so often
that a non-traditional
wrestling fan can't really keep up.
You watch a football game, you know, listen, you put the ball into the end zone.
It's six points, extra point, a point, field goal, three points, right?
Safety two.
You watch basketball.
You know, if you're behind this arc, it's three points.
If you're within it, it's two points.
In wrestling, there's so many different subjective rule sets that you're like,
okay, well, if you unlock your hands here, or if this guy gets pushed out of
bounds,
it's a point.
But if you shove them out of bounds, it's no points.
If he's grounded, it's no points.
But if his knee is off the mat, then it's a point.
So there's so many different like little nuances in the sport that make it
difficult to follow.
And even if you're within it, like sometimes you have to address what the rule
set is before
you even compete in a tournament.
There are times where we're meeting with administration and referees before we
compete at the Olympics
World Championships, just so we can stay current on the rule set for that year,
because it's
Just that much?
Always evolving.
Always evolving.
Is that something that plays in your head while you're actually competing?
Do you have to think like, oh, wait a minute.
What is, what's the rule for this place?
You know, that's a good question.
I think in the heat of the moment, sometimes I imagine you've seen it
a lot in MMA, whether it's a guy, you know, hitting someone in the back of the
head or,
you know, kicking them when they're down on a knee, like all these little
things that
when you're in the battle and you're fired up and you're trying to put this man
out,
like you don't even think about the rule set.
You just, you know, it has to be programmed.
I think experience just multiple times within this position, there's a certain
level of
savviness and mental toughness that you have to have to get there.
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