JRE MMA Show #113 with Chad Mendes

Joe Rogan (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

Jamie (0:09)

All right, we're up and running.

Joe Rogan (0:13)

Money Mendes, what's up?

Chad Mendes (0:14)

Good to see you, brother.

Joe Rogan (0:16)

Finally, man, we've been talking about doing this a long time.

Chad Mendes (0:18)

Too long, bro.

Joe Rogan (0:19)

Whoa, look at that, Jamie. We splattered. I tried to push the plunger down on the French press, and it splattered everywhere. So, if my microphone explodes, we know why. Sorry, this table needed a little seasoning.

Needed some color.

Chad Mendes (0:36)

I'm gonna throw one over here. I'll get this.

Joe Rogan (0:38)

Sorry.

So, what's happening, man? How you doing? How's the retirement life? Retirement from fighting, but maybe not really.

Chad Mendes (0:46)

No, man, I'm actually more busy now, not fighting. I'm actually, I wanna get back into the training part of it so it can slow down a little bit. But it's been good, dude. It's, we got a ton of stuff going on, a lot of stuff on the plate. My wife's about to kill me, but.

But we got some shit going.

Joe Rogan (1:06)

You're working too much?

Chad Mendes (1:07)

Too much, man. Way too much, but it's good, man. After fighting, I had to channel that energy of getting shit going and being successful somewhere.

I almost felt like I jumped into a little bit of a depression there for a couple weeks after because I had like no sense of doing, you know?

And so I was like, fuck it, I'm gonna start just trying to grow a couple brands and building a couple companies and see what happens. So I was like, honed all my energy onto that stuff and it definitely took over. So it's been nice. It's been fun being able to just basically channel that stuff into that and let it rip.

Joe Rogan (1:47)

It's one of the most difficult things for a fighter is the stopping fighting, but you don't know what to do with all this intense energy that you've been focusing your whole life in one way. And now all of a sudden, and for a lot of fighters, it's like their whole identity, right?

Chad Mendes (2:03)

It is, man. Like I started wrestling when I was five years old. Like I wrestled from five years old every single year up and through college. And then the day after graduation drove up to Faber's, I lived in his spare room and started training, trained for three months and had my first pro fight. And then just basically never stopped. And so it's like when you have that identity of an athlete and then that's like your routine, that's what you do.

Like when I stopped, I was just like, dude, what am I doing?

Like, what do I do with my life?

Joe Rogan (2:39)

And how old are you now?

Chad Mendes (2:41)

36, I just turned 36 in May.

Joe Rogan (2:43)

So you're still in this like athletic zone where you're still, you know, until you're in the, once you're around 40, people start going, man, time to do something else. But 36, it's like, man, Anderson was in his prime at 36

Chad Mendes (2:58)

Yeah, I was gonna say unless you're Dan Hendo or even Couture, but those are freaks.

Joe Rogan (3:03)

Well, Couture didn't even start his career, I think, until he was 35 I wanna say he might have been, it was 34 or 35 with his first UFC fight.

Chad Mendes (3:14)

Yeah, it's crazy.

Joe Rogan (3:16)

Let's find out what that is, find out. It's like 1997, I was there for it. That was the tournament, and it was the same weekend that Tito Ortiz had his first fight, Guy Metzger had his first fight.

Tito beat Wes Albright, I don't know how I remember that. And then he fought Guy and Guy tapped him out. Guy caught him in a guillotine.

Chad Mendes (3:39)

I remember watching those. I remember going to Blockbuster. Do you remember Blockbuster?

Me and my brothers were right over there on our bikes and I'd go straight to the section that had all the VHS for the UFC events.

Joe Rogan (3:54)

Right next to like faces of death.

Chad Mendes (3:57)

We'd grab as many as we could, take them home and sit there and just watch them for hours.

Joe Rogan (4:02)

I remember, I believe it was UFC 2 was the only one that was available. I believe you couldn't get UFC 1 on VHS for a while.

Chad Mendes (4:09)

Yeah.

Joe Rogan (4:09)

Because I think Horry and Gracie owned it or something.

Jamie (4:13)