On a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience with artist Mike Maxwell, Joe Rogan said the quiet part out loud for a lot of long-time gym rats: he treats Brazilian jiu-jitsu like a “filter.” Train it long enough, and he figures you’ve probably shed the worst parts of your ego. In his words: “If you’ve been doing jiu-jitsu eight years, I’m 99% sure I can hang out with you.” That line—and the broader claim that BJJ “filters out fake people and big egos”—ricocheted around the grappling internet and quickly became the debate of the week. (Watch JRE #2359 with Maxwell on YouTube or see the quote in this episode page snippet here.)
Rogan’s point didn’t come out of nowhere. It arrived in the usual JRE cadence—personal experience, a sweeping generalization, and a punchline that’s made for clipping—then got boosted by headlines and sports blogs that distilled it to its spiciest phrasing. Bloody Elbow ran a piece highlighting the “nicest people”/“99 percent” framing (read it), and the Times of India recap crystallized it as a culture callout (“filter for fake people and big egos”) (their write-up). Whether you agreed or rolled your eyes, you probably saw it.
So…is jiu-jitsu really a filter?
Why Rogan’s take resonated
If you’ve spent time on the mats, you can see why the idea feels right. BJJ has built-in humility: you get tapped by smaller, newer people; you’re forced to problem-solve while uncomfortable; and you can’t bluff your way through a five-minute roll. The practice punishes delusion. Rogan’s been saying versions of this for years—BJJ as a “humbling” craft that attracts “the nicest people”—and the Maxwell episode simply packaged the sentiment into a shareable line.
Plenty of athletes and coaches echoed the vibe: if someone has stayed consistent for most of a decade, they’ve probably shown up when it was inconvenient, learned to lose without sulking, and developed the kind of self-control that makes them decent teammates. In that sense, Rogan’s “eight-year filter” is shorthand for consistency + community feedback—two forces that nudge personality in a pro-social direction.
Where the pushback landed
The counter-arguments came fast and, in many cases, from inside the house. Critics called the claim survivorship bias with a gi: we only see the folks who stayed and improved, not the ones who trained around toxicity and left. Others flagged the obvious—grappling isn’t immune to jerks, politics, or pseudoscience—and pointed to recent flare-ups where black belts publicly challenged Rogan’s outsized influence on BJJ culture. Even if you like the guy and love the sport, “BJJ filters out egos” can sound like romantic marketing when real-world mats are messy.
There’s also a class argument hiding in plain sight. The people most able to “pass” an eight-year persistence test are the ones with the time, money, and geography for consistent training. If the filter selects for resource stability as much as it selects for humility, we should be cautious about treating it as a moral sieve.
What Rogan actually said—and didn’t
Because debate tends to drift, it’s worth tracking the source. In episode #2359, Rogan describes jiu-jitsu as rewarding precisely because it’s hard and ego-unfriendly; he jokes that, after enough years, he can be “99% sure” you’re someone he can spend time with. He also repeats a familiar theme: grappling builds real-world confidence and patience. That’s the claim; he didn’t say jiu-jitsu makes people good, only that it selects for certain traits by making ego expensive. If you wanted a more formal thesis, that’s it. (Watch the episode here or reference the quote here.)
Why this became the BJJ conversation
Partly, this is about Rogan’s reach. When he praises a practitioner or riffs on a hot-button promotion, it shapes discourse well beyond the gym. The same week the “filter” line popped, follow-on coverage and social clips amplified the take, helping it leap from podcast context into BJJ timelines and group chats (see Bloody Elbow’s coverage here and a mainstream recap here). Like it or not, when Rogan talks about BJJ, the room listens—and reacts.
It’s also about identity. BJJ culture likes to imagine itself as self-correcting: tap often, improve always, leave your ego at the door. Rogan’s line flatters that self-image. The backlash reminds us that ideals and outcomes aren’t the same thing, and that communities need structure—clear ethics, good coaching, transparent promotions—if they want the best version of themselves to be the most common one.
The useful takeaway (beyond the clips)
If you’re a coach, the “filter” framing is a prompt to design the filter, not just talk about it. Gyms that actually de-incentivize ego do a few simple things well:
- They make safety and consent explicit (who sets intensity; how “positional sparring” works; when “no” is a complete sentence).
- They reward technical growth and good partner habits as visibly as they reward podiums.
- They normalize being a beginner—because real filters keep doors open and sort by behavior, not by swagger or resources.
If you’re a student, the takeaway is simpler: how you train is as reflective of your character as that you train. Show up, respect partners, choose hard things, and take responsibility for your rounds. You don’t need eight years for that filter to start working on you.
Our read
Rogan’s “filter” line works as a metaphor and a mirror. As a metaphor, it captures something true about what consistent, humbling practice can do to a person. As a mirror, it reflects whatever a gym actually is. Some rooms filter for resilience and generosity; some accidentally filter for cliques and cosplay. The conversation his clip started is the useful part: it pushes teams to ask what are we really selecting for?
Whether you found his take inspiring or insufferable, it did what good provocations do in sport—it forced the community to check its culture against its slogans.
