Timestamped..
Joe Rogan is saying "we have to realise that their best athletes are all amateurs.. They don't have professional sports"
Matt Brown: boxing?
Rogan: "yeah, but that's it, they don't have.. well they have mma too Fedor obviously right but they don't have like NFL, NBA, Major league Baseball, HOCKEY.. they don't have like this professional venue like we do over here, so a lot of their greatest athletes go into amateur Olympics so they are juicing these people up for Soviet glory...
I like Joe and i find his podcast very good when he has interesting guests but to say that Russia don't have professional sports or a professional venue is very ignorant. First of all, the sports he is mentioning NBA (Basketball), MLB (Baseball), NFL(American Football) is almost exclusively played in Usa, there are very few European players in those sports..
Hockey.. The Russian hockey league is only 2nd to NHL and Russia has a very strong national hockey team (they won the world cup 2009, 2012, 2014) with many players playing in KHL.. They regularly have top 10 draft picks (5 since 2015) and in the 2004 draft Ovechkin was no.1 and Malkin was no.2 and they became big stars..
Their football league (Soccer for Americans) holds a higher level of playing than MLS and is ranked statistically better by the american web news Blecher report
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1458287-ranking-the-top-20-world-football-leagues-statistically
Russia and northern Europe favors track and field, and winter sports like skiing (because the american sports are not popular in Europe) and you can compete in competitions other than the Olympics.. Where they are very successful..