It was almost agreed that Hollywood actor Wesley Snipes would face Joe Rogan in the MMA cage in order to pay off his IRS debt.
In spite of having a successful acting career throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the Internal Revenue Service demanded that Wesley Snipes pay $23.5 million in back taxes for the years 2001 to 2006 in the late 2000s. This resulted in Snipes receiving a sentence of three years in prison during the trial, during which he attempted to settle his debts by providing only $850,000 in cash.
The offer was rejected by the US Tax Court Judge Kathleen Kerrigan, who then upheld the judgment of the IRS to require Snipes to pay $ 9.5 million. This amount was nevertheless a significant reduction from the initial demand of $23.5 million. In 2010, Wesley Snipes challenged Joe Rogan, who was serving as the color commentator for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).
Snipes had originally intended to call out fellow actor Jean-Claude Van Damme, but it was apparently UFC executive Campbell McClaren who proposed Joe Rogan’s name instead. Snipes then changed his mind. When Rogan was asked about the episode on his JRE podcast in 2016, comedian Nate Bargatze asked him about it.
“He’s like, ‘nobody’s gonna pay to see you and Jean-Claude Van Damme fight.'” Those are his exact words. You will have to compete against someone who was “current” at the time. Consequently, he asked me, “Would you fight Joe Rogan?” And then he said, ‘Yup, let’s do it.’ They then approached me, and I said, “How much money do you need?” After that, they began conversing, at which point I remarked, “All right, let’s see what develops.”
Wesley Snipes vs. Joe Rogan: JRE host predicts potential outcome
Joe Rogan, a commentator for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), has spent his life honing his skills in a variety of martial arts styles. At the age of nineteen, not only has the JRE host been able to break heavy bags with spinning back kicks, but he has also rendered his opponent unconscious using the exact same technique.
In the meantime, it’s been said that Wesley Snipes holds a black belt in Hapkido at the second degree and a black belt in Shotokan karate at the fifth degree. In spite of this, Rogan is certain that he would have “choked the f*** out” of the Hollywood actor had they engaged in a mixed martial arts (MMA) bout. It would appear that this comprehension was the driving force for Snipes’ decision to flee. In addition, the UFC commentator stated the following on his podcast:
“At that point in time, I had already earned the rank of brown belt, and I had seen firsthand the results of bouts between brown belts and white belts. I just can’t imagine. I am able to stand up for myself, and even if I am not as skilled at striking as I was when I was younger, I am good enough to know what not to do and where not to be. And if I manage to get a hold of someone who isn’t familiar with jiu-jitsu, you can bet your bottom dollar that I’ll be choking the living hell out of them… He was aware that I was about to strangle the living daylights out of him.
