UFC Hall of Famer Matt Hughes had a few opinions about Joe Rogan’s broadcasting performance at UFC 121 in the co-main event bout between Shields and Kampmann.
“From a technical view, Kampmann had a terrible fight, in my opinion, he gave the fight to Shields,” Hughes writes on his website. “One thing I will say is Joe Rogan’s commentary was a little off during the fight. The ground game was pretty even in my book with Shields doing a little more controlling. Kampmann escaped to his feet several times and Kampmann had more submission attempts than Shields had, but listening to Rogan, you would have thought Shields had submitted him the first ten seconds of being on the ground. I really think the UFC could use a third man doing the broadcast, that has some experience inside the Octagon. I don’t disagree with everything Rogan says, but there are a lot of things he says that I just laugh at.”
I can understand where Matt Hughes is coming from, but Joe was also giving credit to Martin Kampmann in the stand-up of the fight. Kampmann ultimately lost the bout on the ground when he should have kept the fight standing, but chose to test his submissions on the much more experienced grappling skills of Shields. Kampmann’s submission attempts were in favour of Shields who fights out of Cesar Gracie camp. Shields never looked close to submitting and used the submission attempts as an opportunity to end up on top of Kampmann. Having a guest fighter as a commentator would also be welcomed but Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg do a great job getting fans watching excited.
