There have been a few major occurrences that shaped the way the JRE podcast is today. Among the contenders for the number one spot are definitely the time Joe Rogan fired Brian Redban as producer, and the Carlos Mencia incident.

The Carlos Mencia incident would shape out to end one comedian’s career and have the other one banned from Los Angeles’ biggest comedy club for years. More importantly, it would change the comedy scene forever by ostracising plagiarism and joke thievery. But let’s go back to the beginning of what led up to the Carlos Mencia incident…

Who is Carlos Mencia?

Carlos Mencia in 2009.

Source: wikimedia commons

If you’ve come across Joe Rogan fairly recently, you may not have heard of the comedian Carlos Mencia. It may seem strange today, but back in the early 2000s Carlos Mencia was a much bigger comedian than Joe Rogan.

Mencia’s stand-up career started in the late 80s with the controversial decision to change his name. He went from ‘Ned’ to ‘Carlos’, allegedly to appeal more to Latino audiences. In the following years this decision seemed to pay off. He was touring with other Latino Comedians, like Pablo Francisco, and was chosen to host HBO’s Loco Slam.

Come the early 2000s, Mencia’s career was fully taking off. He released two HBO specials, one winning him the award for the Best Stand-Up Comedy Special. It was during that time Comedy Central picked up his show Mind of Mencia, which later became the channel’s second-highest rated program after South Park.

Carlos Mencia – Joke thief

Hated by his fellow comedians?Source: Flickr and Max Pixel

With Mencia’s career in full swing, Comedy Central airs the first season of Mind of Mencia in 2006. Its moderate initial success is outweighed heavy criticism for copying the concept of the Chappelle’s Show. And the accusations start piling up…

In 2007, Comedian George Lopez accuses him on the Howard Stern show – the biggest radio show at the time and arguably the JRE’s predecessor. In the interview, Lopez talks about how Mencia put 13 minutes (!) of stolen material into his HBO special.

On stage at the Comedy Club in L.A., Joe Rogan’s good friend Ari Shafir confronts Mencia about stealing one of his joke verbatim. Mencia pleads ignorance, but gets immediately shut down by Ari: The joke Mencia stole was from when Ari was opening for him.

But in the end, the comedian that stuck his neck out the most and risked his whole career, was Joe Rogan. Already in 2005 Joe posted in his blog about how Carlos was a ‘weak-minded joke thief’ :

I’ve seen you steal over and over again. I’ve seen you Steal from Paul Mooney, I’ve seen you steal from Dave Chappelle, I’ve seen you steal from old Richard Pryor albums, I’ve seen you steal from Jeff fucking Foxworthy. Joe Rogan in 2005 talking about Carlos Mencia in his now deleted blog post.

In 2007, Joe went all out and confronted Mencia in front of a live crowd at the Comedy Store. To this day, the whole comedy scene heavily respects Joe for what he did that day.(Although more recently, people weren’t happy with how Joe handled the accusations of Amy Schumer being a joke thief.)

In an extremely heated debate, which would later be called the Carlos Mencia incident, Joe lists numerous times Mencia stole jokes from other comedians.

The Carlos Menica incident

In 2007, Brian Redban was still heavily involved with Joe Rogan. Shortly after, Brian was fired from the Joe Rogan Experience in contentious circumstances – one of the reasons being his poor editing. Despite the shoddy editing and the unintentionally hilarious transitions, the video of the Carlos Mencia incident went viral instantly.

Impact on Rogan’s and Mencia’s careers

The incident turned out to be a massive moment in Joe’s career. More importantly, it shaped the whole comedy scene in general. This is why it keeps coming up on the podcast every now and then. In 2018, 11 whole years after the events, Joe went into detail about what happened and its consequences.

Although most people agreed with Joe at the time, his agents dropped him shortly after the incident. As the agency represented both Joe and Mencia, they likely had to pick a side, and went with the one bringing in the most money.

To make things worse, the comedy club, one of the biggest clubs in the world, banned Joe for 2 years for making the video public on youtube.

This could have been easily the end of Rogan’s stand-up career…

Google trends: Interest in Joe Rogan and Carlos Mencia. The Carlos Mencia incident might have slowed down Joe’s career, but in the end he prevailed.

In 2011, Mencia made a controversial comeback on TV after having been brandished as a joke thief. In an interview he reveals that he had been in therapy due to accusations of plagiarism. This did not stop him from admitting to joke thievery:

One year later, one big event made Joe finally return to the Store: One of his best friends, Ari Shaffir, was filming his Comedy Central special. Reflecting back on his return years later, Joe admits that if it wasn’t for Ari, he might have never returned to the Comedy Store.

As we all know, Joe eventually prevailed and became one of the biggest stand-up comedians of all time. Whether or not you like his humour, we have to admit that he risked everything and deserves respect for it.

As to Carlos Mencia: his career never fully recovered from the incidents. However, jokester claim that it wasn’t this incident, but Mencia’s lack of funniness that ended his career.