Joe Rogan revisits Conor McGregor vs. ‘The Mountain’

Several years ago, a video of Conor McGregor sparring with Hafþór Björnsson, the Icelandic bodybuilder and actor who played “The Mountain” on Game of Thrones, took the Internet by storm. UFC commentator Joe Rogan recently revisited this viral video on his popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience.

He’s seemingly as impressed by it today as he was when it first came out.

“[Conor] doesn’t give a f**k,” Rogan said. “They’re sparring, Conor’s moving around, hitting him in the body, and the guy’s trying to grab him, but Conor does not let him grab him. [Conor’s] controlling it. The guy’s trying to grab him but he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

“The big guy doesn’t know what he’s doing,” he added. “Conor knows that this big motherf**ker can’t keep this up. He can’t keep it up. He’s not able to keep up this pace. He’s already hurting.”

“[Björnsson] is not used to sparring. Everything he’s doing is these big movements and he’s not breathing well. He’s all tense and tight. He went to take a deep breath — All this is tense for him. He gets ahold of the leg, he doesn’t know what to do, Conor hand fights with him.”

While Joe Rogan is clearly impressed with the way Conor McGregor handled himself against a much bigger man, he added that McGregor likely wouldn’t have sparred with Björnsson if he was a trained fighter.

“[Björnsson] just doesn’t know what to do,” Rogan concluded. “But if he learned what to do, Conor would never [spar him]. Like Francis Ngannou, who is probably one of the biggest heavyweights in the UFC, Conor would never do that. He’s a giant striker. He’d f**k him up. But that guy [Björnsson] didn’t know what he was doing.”

What are your thoughts on this classic viral video? Are you with Joe Rogan on this one?

This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 8/6/2019.