Is a video that shows Joe Rogan saying he is considering refusing to commentate the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fight at the White House legitimate? No, that's not true: The video was labeled "Contains AI-generated media." Rogan did criticize the event on his podcast, saying he does not like the idea of fighting outside, but he did not say he was considering refusing to commentate. There are no credible news reports confirming the rumor of his planned refusal.
The claim appeared in a video uploaded on May 29, 2026 by TikTok account @arthur.gossip (archived here) with the following description:
No wonder Joe Rogan cannot tolerate the idea of holding a UFC event at the White House.#fyp #foryoupage #tiktok #ufc #joerogan
This is what a screenshot of the video posted on TikTok looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @arthur.gossip on TikTok.)
Here is what the video looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
@arthur.gossip No wonder Joe Rogan cannot tolerate the idea of holding a UFC event at the White House.#fyp #foryoupage #tiktok #ufc #joerogan ♬ original sound - arthur.gossip
THIS IS AI
The video is tagged "Creator labeled as AI-generated," as shown by the red circle in the bottom-left corner of the screenshot below:
(Image source: post by @arthur.gossip on TikTok. Red oval by Lead Stories.)
The audio alleged to be Rogan's appears to be AI generated, as the words do not perfectly match his facial expressions. The voice is stilted and does not naturally flow, another indication of AI-generated video.
Online detection tool DetectVideoAI rated the video as 48% likely to be AI generated, but ranked it as "no strong AI-generation indicators detected," as this screenshot shows:
(Image source: DetectVideoAI.)
Online detection tool Hive Moderation rated the video 28.5% likely to be AI generated and 21.2% likely to have AI generated speech, as this screenshot shows:
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
Rogan is a regular UFC commentator and has been scheduled to commentate the event. He spoke about the UFC fight on the May 27, 2026 episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience," telling guests former UFC fighter Josh Thomson and UFC referee "Big" John McCarthy that he wasn't looking forward to the fight being held outside. A search of the transcript for the episode on JRE MMA Show YouTube account (archived here) with keywords "refusing to commentate" shows that he never said the quotes attributed to him in the video posted on TikTok, as this screenshot shows:
(Image source: video posted @JREMMAShow on YouTube.)
Rogan's remarks about the White House begin at 2:28:42:
The White House thing is odd. Um I don't like it. I don't like the idea of fighting outside at all. Well, there's problems with it. June and it's DC and we looked it up the last time like last year same day was 100°. Yeah. Oh yeah. That's hot as f*** Then you add the lights. Oh yeah. Yeah. The lights. You add the lights attracts bugs. How about dehydration? Oh yeah. Yeah. The the bugs are a big one.
At 2:33:08 Rogan is asked if he is going to be there and he says yes:
Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to be there. Allegedly. Allegedly. If there's not a bomb that goes off between now and then, who f***ing knows? This world is crazy.
Lead Stories searched keywords on Google News (archived here) and Yahoo! News (archived here) and found reports of his remarks on his podcast worried about the fight being held outside but no matching news reports that he was considering refusing to commentate the UFC fight. Had Rogan said he was doing so, major news outlets would have reported it due to the timing and high profile of the event being held at the White House.
