The “King” of submission grappling Gordon Ryan recently shared on bodybuilder turned YouTuber Flex Lewis’ podcast how his first appearance (out of two so far) on the Joe Rogan Podcast was one of the worst experiences of his life.
From 2018 to 2022 Gordon Ryan was having extreme trouble with his stomach, due to an undiagnosed condition that made him nauseous after even the smallest bite of food. When he came on the Joe Rogan Podcast for the very first time, he was in one of the worst periods of struggling with his stomach conditions, but how do you say “no” to Joe Rogan?
At the time, Ryan was in Austin looking to buy a house. As the Joe Rogan Podcast had already relocated there from L.A., Ryan got the invite and did not want to reject the opportunity, despite eating restaurant food while hunting for a house made him endure the worst period of his life:
As Ryan told Flex Lewis:
“I remember like the worst experience like pretty much my life, I guess, it would probably be like uh, when uh I went on Rogan for the first time…
I just remember getting to Rogan and being like I am so nauseous, I’m gonna die. Like almost like an inch away from throwing up, but I’m like I can’t tell Joe Rogan that I can’t do his podcast right now. … I’m like I can’t like be a **** and just tell Rogan like ‘hey man, I really can’t do this podcast but the whole podcast’, I’m just struggling like sipping water.”
The stomach issues even sidelined Ryan for a year, forcing him into retirement. it was his discussion of the problem on that very first Joe Rogan Podcast appearance that eventually led Gordon to a proper diagnosis and resolution of the ailment as a result of the reach the JRE podcast has.