Joe Rogan is something of a modern renaissance man. From podcasts to comedy, the UFC commentator spends his days packed full of activities that he enjoys, and appears to want to constantly learn new skills and facts about life.

Probably makes sense that he’s not the sort of man who enjoys standing in a recording booth for hours on end. Hence, during the making of EA UFC 3, Rogan simply couldn’t bring himself to do any more voiceover work.

“Joe Rogan absolutely hates doing voiceover for the game,” UFC 3 creative director Brian Hayes said, speaking with usgamer. “We’ve basically come to an agreement that we’re not going to ask him to do it anymore because he hates it.”

Instead, EA began mining old broadcasts featuring Rogan in an attempt to find clear phrases and soundbites that they could use for the game, and they still have the recordings from the first and second installments of the series.

Plus, it wasn’t a surprise to the company that Rogan wasn’t so keen on a third time round. During the making of EA UFC 2, Rogan agreed to let EA use his likeness in the game if it meant giving him less obligation to record so much.

 

“Dude we did a fuckload of hours,” Rogan said about the experience on his podcast. “I mean it was hours and hours and hours. … I [was in the game] so I could get out of doing more commentary because there was so much to do. It was a constant grind. I put my full effort into it, like I really wanted it to be good.”

But while you might think not having the ‘voice of the UFC’ engaged in the project could make things harder for EA, it seems there are no hard feelings.

“I actually appreciate Joe Rogan’s honesty with us from the get-go,” Hayes said. “[He told us] ‘I absolutely cannot stand doing this stuff’, and he did some really good work with us for the first two iterations of the game. But moving forward, for your own sanity, it made sense for us to go with the approach we did.”

The game comes out February 2 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.