When Joe Rogan confronted Carlos Mencia for stealing jokes, live onstage at the Comedy Store in 2005, Mencia was the far bigger star. “He called out Mencia,” explained comedian Jeff Dye on The George Janko Show podcast. “Mencia was so successful, had the number one show on Comedy Central. He was like crushing it. And the Comedy Store asked Joe to leave. They said, ‘Joe, you’re not welcome anymore.’ Imagine saying that to Joe Rogan.”
Even more galling to Dye was that Mencia continued to get away with his terrible behavior — at least for a while. “Carlos Mencia got to carry on with his bullshit and his lying,” he said. “He was lying about his own race. He’s Honduran, and he was calling himself a b—-er, like using a slur for Mexican. He was literally a fraud.”
But Mencia continued to dig his own hole, explained Dye. “He’d be like, ‘Yeah, I do steal jokes, but I make them better.’ And he thought that was going to help him, and it didn’t.”
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Still, Rogan paid a price for accusing Mencia of joke theft. Not only was Rogan banned from the Comedy Store, but his agency dropped him as well. (The agency also represented Mencia, who was the bigger money-maker at the moment.) “It worked against him until later it was proven,” said Dye. “Who’s bigger now: Carlos Mencia or Joe Rogan? Joe wins, but at that moment, he must have been like, ‘Shit, maybe I shouldn’t have picked on Carlos.’”
That’s the one thing Janko always wanted to ask Rogan: Did he regret the public callout? Lucky for Janko, another disgraced comedian, Chris D’Elia, was also a guest on the podcast. He said he asked Rogan that very question, and Rogan replied, “If I had to call out Mencia again, I would still do it.”
D’Elia, a comic who knows something about being called out and canceled, was expecting a different answer when he guested on The Joe Rogan Experience, figuring Rogan would have wished the whole incident had never happened. But nope: “He said, ‘Yeah, because it was true.’”
We don’t just have to take D’Elia’s word for it either. “I wouldn’t do a thing different,” Rogan reiterated to Andrew Schulz and Akaash Singh on the Flagrant podcast in 2022. “I took the hit. And the hit wasn’t bad because I was right.”
Janko couldn’t believe Rogan had the nerve to take on a successful comic at that stage in his own career. “I’m established in my lane, and when I’m walking around comedians, I still feel a little insecure,” he admitted. “I’m like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to piss anybody off here.’”
It’s not just about other comics holding grudges. “That’s the worst person to piss off,” Janko claimed. “They not only will write bits about you, but if it’s funny, it will stick. So I’m walking on eggshells.”
Rogan didn’t walk on eggshells. From Fear Factor to UFC to podcasts from his garage, “he made it all cool,” D’Elia argued.
“He lived in his own world,” agreed Janko.
“That’s a guy who’s ahead of his time,” D’Elia marveled.
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