Joe Rogan: Early life, career, age, girlfriend, weight of the multi-talented podcaster

Joe Rogan is a comedian, podcast host, and UFC colour commentator from the United States. He has also worked as an actor and a television host in the past.

Early life

Joseph James Rogan was born in Newark, New Jersey on August 11, 1967. From the age of seven to eleven, the family lived in San Francisco, California, before moving to Gainesville, Florida when he was eleven. They settled in Newton Upper Falls, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston, where Rogan attended Newton South High School, where he graduated in 1985.

Rogan played Little League Baseball before becoming interested in martial arts in his early adolescence. Rogan began karate at the age of 14 and Taekwondo a year later. He won the US Open Championship Taekwondo tournament as a lightweight when he was 19 years old.

He was the Massachusetts full-contact state champion for four years in a row before becoming a Taekwondo instructor. Rogan also competed in amateur kickboxing, where he had a 2–1 record. He retired from competition at the age of 21 after developing frequent headaches and fearing further injury.

He enrolled at the University of Massachusetts Boston but dropped out before graduating. He lived in the Boston area until he was 24, at which point he relocated to New York City.

Career

Stand-up Career

Rogan had no plans to become a professional stand-up comedian and instead considered a career in kickboxing. Rogan’s gym and Taekwondo school friends persuaded him to try stand-up comedy because he would make jokes and do impressions to make them laugh.

On August 27, 1988, at the age of 21, he performed his first stand-up routine at an open-mic night at Boston’s Stitches comedy club, after six months of preparing material and practicing his delivery.

Hardball

Rogan moved to Los Angeles in 1994, where he landed his first national television appearance on the MTV comedy show Half-Hour Comedy Hour. Rogan agreed to a development deal with the Disney channel. In the 1994 nine-episode Fox sitcom Hardball, he played Frank Valente, a young, ego-centric star player on a professional baseball team.

Rogan began performing at The Comedy Store in Hollywood around this time and was hired as a paid regular by owner Mitzi Shore. He performed at the club for free for the next 13 years, helping to pay for the venue’s new sound system.

NewsRadio

Rogan starred in the NBC sitcom NewsRadio as Joe Garrelli, an electrician and handyman at the show’s fictional news radio station, from 1995 to 1999. He later described his time on NewsRadio as a “dream gig” because it allowed him to earn money while working on his stand-up routine as frequently as he could. Throughout the series, he was working on a pilot for a show called Overseas.

Ultimate Fighting Championship

Rogan began his career as a backstage and post-fight interviewer for the MMA promotion Ultimate Fighting Championship. On February 7, 1997, he competed in UFC 12: Judgement Day in Dothan, Alabama. He left after two years because his salary did not cover the cost of travel to the events, which were frequently held in rural areas at the time.

After Zuffa purchased the UFC in 2001, Rogan attended some events and became friends with Dana White, the UFC’s new president, who offered him a job as a colour commentator. White was able to hire Rogan for free in 2002 in exchange for premium event tickets for himself and his friends.

Rogan accepted pay for the job as a commentator after about fifteen free gigs, working alongside Mike Goldberg until the end of 2016. Rogan won the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Award for Best Television Announcer twice, and the World MMA Awards named him MMA Personality of the Year four times.

Fear Factor

In 1999, Rogan signed a three-album deal with Warner Bros. Records and began making tentative plans to star in The Joe Rogan Show, his own prime-time televised sitcom on Fox. The show was to star Rogan as “a second-string sportscaster who lands a spot as the token male on a View-style women’s show,” according to Seinfeld writer Bill Masters.

Rogan’s television show development was halted in 2001 when he accepted an offer from NBC to host the American edition of Fear Factor. Later, Rogan stated that the main reason he agreed was to collect observations and anecdotes for his stand-up comedy. Rogan’s national profile grew as a result of the show.

Rogan returned to Fear Factor in 2011 for its seventh and final season, which lasted until 2012.

The Joe Rogan Experience

Rogan returned to Fear Factor in 2011 for the show’s seventh and final season, which aired from 2011 to 2012. By August 2010, the podcast had been renamed The Joe Rogan Experience and had risen to the top 100 podcasts on iTunes, before being picked up by SiriusXM Satellite Radio in 2011. Guests on the podcast discuss current events, politics, philosophy, comedy, hobbies, and a variety of other topics.

The podcast was downloaded over 11 million times in January 2015. By October of that year, the podcast had received 16 million monthly downloads, making it one of the most popular free podcasts.

Rogan announced on May 19, 2020, that he had signed a multi-year licencing agreement with Spotify worth an estimated $100 million, making it one of the largest licencing agreements in the podcast industry. The Joe Rogan Experience will be available on Spotify beginning September 1, 2020, and will be exclusive to the platform beginning January 20, 2021.

Personal life

In 2009, Rogan married Jessica Ditzel, a former cocktail waitress. The couple has two daughters, one born in 2008 and the other in 2010. Rogan is also Ditzel’s stepfather from a previous relationship.

The family first lived in Boulder, Colorado, before moving to Bell Canyon, California, where Rogan had been since early 2003. In mid-2018, they paid nearly $5 million for a new home in the area. The family will move into a $14 million home on Lake Austin, Texas, in 2020.

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