Name: Joe Rogan Experience #2456 - Michael Jai White
Uploaded: 2026-02-18T18:00:35.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2456 - Michael Jai White' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-02-18. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2456 - Michael Jai White' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-02-18. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #2456 - Michael Jai White

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
You're all suited up, you got a wildcard boxing hat on, a Bruce Lee shirt, come
on son.
Hey, we got the yellow thing going on.
Yeah, you got it all going on.
What's happening? Great to see you.
Man, things are really well.
This thing is a little loud.
Is it? There's a, on that thing there, there's a little volume knob.
You can turn that sucker down.
There it is.
Last time I saw you was at Terry Black's Barbecue.
Yeah, yeah.
Random run-in.
Yeah, that was crazy.
That was crazy.
Yeah, man, I was thinking about going there right after this.
I was like, what? Terry Black's?
That place was no joke.
That place rules.
Yeah, man.
Are you still in LA?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What's it like?
It's cool, man.
Is it?
Yeah.
You like it? You're the only person that said that.
No, no.
Yeah, well, because, okay, I defend LA in a way where, first of all, if you got
a handful
of good people with you, you know, your family, then it's, so the fact that LA
has all kinds
of different things, you could be on a hiking trail in 20 minutes, you could be-
Oh, geographically, it's amazing.
Yeah, and the weather, you can't-
Oh, you can't beat it.
So if you got good people, good friends with you, then it's all good.
You just run by crooks.
It's a nice neighborhood run by the mob.
It's run by the woke mob.
But I mean, geographically, you can't beat it.
You could be at the ocean, and then you could be in the mountains in two hours.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I mean, that's, even if you don't partake, it's still cool.
It still amps up the ante, really.
Oh, yeah.
Like, the spot itself is magical.
It is a magical place to live, although I am deeply concerned that that
motherfucker's
going to get hit with a big one soon.
Mm, it's about time, right?
Yeah, I was reading this article about massive earthquakes in California and
how often they're
spread out, and the possibility of one of them happening within the next decade.
It's very high.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, I try not to think about that.
I try not to think about it, too.
Yeah, yeah, but, you know, now there's, you know, you can, I think they have
better detection
of that stuff now, too.
Mm-mm.
It's better.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
They can't detect.
Well.
Do you remember what happened in Italy?
A couple guys got arrested and went to jail.
They were seismologists because the company, the country, rather, didn't
understand the ability
to detect it.
They had a big earthquake, and a bunch of people died, and so they blamed them.
They blamed these geologists or seismologists.
They wound up winning in court on appeal, because eventually the science was
revealed.
Like, hey, there's no fucking way you can really tell.
But they hung these guys out.
They blamed these guys on not being able to detect it.
Oh, man.
Well, I mean, just think about it.
The last crazy ones were 72 and then 94.
Yeah.
Right.
I think it was 93.
I came, I moved to L.A. right after the last big one.
I saw one of the sections of the highway that had collapsed on the other one.
I remember driving by going, fuck this place.
I was in the middle of that one.
I just, I came into L.A.
Oh, you were there?
Dude, I don't even like to tell the story about what happened during that 94
earthquake.
Oh.
Because it sounds like bullshit.
But literally, I got up, ran out of my house, my apartment at the time, jumped
off the balcony, and watched it happen.
You watched the house collapse?
I watched the earthquake happen from outside.
Oh.
It's like no bullshit.
Everybody, so I thought, oh, shit, I overreacted.
I had a bad dream.
I lived on the first floor of this apartment building.
All I know is I wake up, I'm off balance, catching my balance in the parking
lot, right?
And like, oh, shoot, I got to find the guard to get me back in the apartment
building, right?
And I'm thinking, what, you know, what, what's, like, I've lost my mind or
something.
The next thing you know, everything shakes and the lights go out.
Just go, just everything gets black.
And so I'm backing, I retreat back because I'm thinking the building's going to
fall on me.
And I'm like, wait a minute.
Then I got the story from everybody else that experienced it.
They said that the first thing that happened was the building shook and the
lights went out.
Well, I was outside watching that.
So I'm outside when it happened, like some kind of canine.
So what made you jump over the—
I don't know.
You had a feeling?
Dude.
Or did you have like the first, was it the first rumbles?
I thought, I thought it was, I thought I reacted to the, like some kind of an
aftershock or some kind of rumble.
No, because the girl that was with me.
You left her in the apartment?
Dude.
All she knows is that you jumped up and you ran out of, you ran out of the
house.
And I heard the door slide and that was, and then the next thing you know,
everything shook.
She couldn't, she was trapped in there because there was a closet door that
trapped her in the hallway.
So when I got back in the place, me and a friend had to try to pry the door
open because she couldn't get out.
But I ran out of that place before the earthquake actually happened.
How weird.
Yeah.
You got good instincts.
I don't know what the hell that was.
It has to be because—
I don't even like telling that story because it sounds like bullshit.
Because it really happened that way.
Because then the guard, I talked to the guard, I'm like, hey, when did the
lights go out?
Oh, it shook and the lights went out.
I'm like, I'm watching that happen.
So you felt it happen before it happened?
Some kind of weird way.
Well, I bet humans have that.
Animals definitely have that.
They talk about Thailand, how they had that tsunami and all the animals ran up
to the highest point of the island.
They all just took off.
It's like they just knew instinctively.
I don't know.
Nothing like that has ever happened afterwards.
But I got to say, there's been—I've been lucky over the years.
Yeah, but you're a dude who's tuned in.
You're tuned into your body.
You're tuned into your environment.
You're not going to get caught slipping.
Like, you probably felt something and your spidey sense went off.
Yeah, I kind of have been like that growing up.
I've been, you know, I've been on my own since I was 14.
Been through crazy shit that you normally would see on movies.
And that's the type of shit that gives you those kind of instincts.
But yeah, and I was always the one that said, hey, let's leave.
Let's get out of here.
And then, hey, man, there was a shootout that just happened right after you
left.
Or I could detect, like, the predators.
You know what I mean?
So I grew up kind of that way.
Right.
Because you have to survive on that.
With nobody looking out for you.
Yeah.
Nobody was looking out for you.
You had to look out for yourself.
Well, yeah.
I mean, I was—I was, like, always the junior of the group a lot of times.
Because, like I said, I've been on my own since I was 14.
I haven't grown an inch since I was 13, 14.
I looked like a grown-ass man, right?
I was fighting in tournaments at 15 against, you know, grown men, like, you
know, fighting heavyweight at that time.
But I was always hanging with older people.
Kind of, you know, kind of like I got away with kind of living as an adult
early on.
Because, like, you know—
Did you work?
Yeah.
Well, I was teaching a karate class.
What was happening, see, I used to hang out at this community center in the
hood.
At this time, I moved from Brooklyn to Bridgeport, Connecticut, right?
Bridgeport's a tough neighborhood.
Yeah, yeah.
It was a—
A lot of people don't know.
Yeah, we had the top murder rate per capita, man.
Bridgeport's rough.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So, I was constantly—I mean, there's a community center that was, like, my
haven.
And I would go practice with me and my other karate nuts, you know?
And so, I'd be in the paper for winning heavyweight, you know, competitions or
whatever.
And so, the people that was running the community center said, why don't you
teach a class?
They thought I was an adult.
Oh, that's hilarious.
And so, I was teaching, like, a—you know, like, kind of, like, just under the
table.
I was getting paid under the table, basically.
But I had, like, close to 200 students early on, like, when I'm 15, 16.
Oh, that's crazy.
Yeah.
And so, you know, it was kind of a trip that, you know, which is one of the
reasons why I was a father at 15, you know, because I had one of my students'
older sister, you know, who was, like, had a crush on her—on his instructor.
But I was kind of living the life of a grown-up, like, early on.
And so, you know, there's a faction of people in Bridgeport who think I'm Satan,
I guess, because they think that I'm probably in my 70s now.
You're a vampire.
Right.
Yeah, so there's some people I had to admit, like, no, I wasn't the age you
thought I was back then.
Oh, that's crazy.
Yeah, but I mean, so, yeah, you know, one of the things I'm really grateful for
is growing up that early and having to, you know, use my instincts.
And being that, you know, street fighting and fighting was, like, my favorite
thing to do, actually.
And so, when I got into the martial arts deeper and everything else, you know,
I just really dug into it and wanted to learn style after style and this, you
know, everything.
I was just a martial art nerd for it.
But I also liked the realistic portion of it, even though I was doing other
styles like wushu and everything else.
But, you know, it was actually my haven.
Somewhere Eddie Bravo has to find this video.
There's a video of us working out together at Legends where we were talking
about hopping sidekicks and different types of sidekicks.
And you threw up, there was a bag that we had that had a shitty chain.
But regardless, you threw a hopping sidekick on that chain and the chain
snapped and went flying.
The bag went flying.
And Eddie Bravo was like, what the fuck?
It's a funny video, man.
Right, yeah.
I know Eddie has it somewhere.
I'll probably, I'll text him after this and try to see if he can put it up on
his Instagram or something if he can find it.
Yeah, man, yeah.
Back then, man, we were training when it wasn't even popular.
You know, I used to see you in the gym all the time.
Yeah.
All the time, man.
And you were, just think about this.
Do you know it was 29 years ago, the last time you interviewed me?
Yeah, that's right.
29 years ago.
That Bob Costa show.
He took a week off and I guest hosted it for a week.
Yeah.
And at that time, you were already training with Maurice Smith.
Yes, Maurice was one of the guests.
Right.
You were training.
Because I ended up training with Maurice Smith, you know, every time I'd go to
Seattle.
You know, we'd train together.
So, you know, we're, like, part of this, like, kind of karate, martial art,
nerd culture.
Yeah.
When it wasn't even popular.
No.
I used to see you all the time.
You know, you and, you and, you know, doing jiu-jitsu, Carl Parisian and all
these guys at Legends.
Well, there was another place.
It was, we had, there was Legends and there was another place.
The Bomb Squad.
Yes.
The Bomb Squad was the first place that Eddie taught at.
And then that place closed down.
Then we went to Legends.
Legends, yeah.
And then we moved to the other Legends that was, like, in more East L.A.
And then Eddie started opening up his own place in downtown.
Yeah, yeah.
And that's where I would train with Josh Barnett at that place quite a bit.
Yeah.
Yeah, man.
Old days.
Yes, man.
Yeah.
And who would be coming through the gym?
Because I was training Bob Sapp at one time.
And then I, that's how I got Frankie Lyles connected into that.
Wow.
That whole thing.
And so.
I remember Frankie.
Yeah.
Frankie used to be at the Bomb Squad first.
Right, yeah.
Frankie was, like, my best friend in the world.
And he was, you know, he was a super middleweight champion in the world.
Yeah.
That's who got me deeply 