Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plZCZYR5Kts
the jurogan experience do you want to talk about that thing that you might be doing yeah let's do it we gotta push this microphone in front of you so you just get there you go like that so tell me what this what is this announcement what's going on so i just signed a big contract bro i'm coming back to fighting oh no yeah and the great words of tj dillashaw daddy's home [ __ ] [Laughter] but i'm not coming back to mma man uh i know that i've been seeing a lot of people's comment and they're kind of hoping that i am um i'm coming back to boxing man i want to try something different now you're coming back to regular boxing are you going to do bare knuckle boxing i think we're going to throw some bare knuckle in there bro just mix it up get real crazy now i've seen you you're working out a lot you're hitting a lot of mitts like were you doing that before or did you just have this did they contact you like how did this come about so we've i mean this is actually something that's kind of been in the works for probably a year now um you know it's just for me look i just turned 36 in maine we were just talking about still having that that desire like when i when i left the ufc i was just about to have my first baby um you know we had i had a lot on my plate there was obviously i had just lost but even going into that fight i had started a company was working on a few other companies and there was a lot that i was more excited about than competing at the time and i mean obviously we know that this sport is so brutal like you if you don't have 100 mindset into it you're gonna get [ __ ] up you know and it's for me i was like look dude i'm gonna take some time off um i'm gonna or just or just end it here i have other things going on and we'll see kind of what happens in the future so i decided to retire talked it over with the wife and that was you know what the game plan was so
uh fast forward two and a half years later um you know obviously i still have that desire um and obviously my my baby girl is bigger now we are uh pregnant with a second and uh i just started thinking like man i'm getting older i don't want to get into my 40s and then basically still have this desire to compete and be like it's too [ __ ] late you know so i'm like let's let's start talking to some of these guys i've always wanted to box you know coming off of wrestling my style even in the ufc was boxing and wrestling were probably my two favorite things to do like i absolutely loved boxing sparring when i would be training through through training camps and then obviously wrestling too but um i always wanted to try and compete in some type of boxing competition um and so uh bare knuckle actually reached out to faber and was like hey do you think mendez would ever be interested in this and i'm like i mean i probably never thought about anything bare knuckle before but you know boxing definitely would be fun let me ask you this about bear nugget why why do they have those like really thick wraps that go all around the hand but just expose the knuckle mm-hmm i mean and it's not mandatory on anybody like i see some guys where they just tape their hand right but i think a lot of people do that for wrist support right like you know obviously you punch like a bag with no support in your wrist and a lot of the times it folds but didn't joe riggs get his eye cut because of one of the uh when he fought lombard didn't the rap actually scrape his eye i heard that yeah and that's you know i think that this is an organization that's still very brand new and there's probably still working all these kinks out but um i mean i'm probably gonna tape the [ __ ] out of my wrist just for that for the reason of support but yeah i think that's something that's you
know it's definitely a possibility of getting cut on that stuff do you know when you're fighting october 22nd oh jesus yeah it's coming up october 22nd you have an opponent no opponent yet but it's real uh chandler arizona is what they're saying what weight 155. okay so you're not going to have to cut no that's what i told them i said look dude we just talked about yeah i don't want to cut much anymore you know obviously i'm getting older it's harder it's going to be hard as hell to make 45s but um if i can go 55s i would greatly appreciate that and they're like no that's actually better you're going to have more opponents to choose from so i think that's what we're gonna do um how many rounds uh they're five five two minute rounds which i think why are they doing two minute rounds i don't know why they're maybe just i'm not sure exactly what their thought press is on that but i i mean i love that i'm an explosive athlete obviously i think this i'm pretty much built for this style of fighting you know i can get in there i can be fast explosive quick um powerful and you know it's a quick round i don't have to uh you know face yourself pace myself grind out those five-minute rounds i can just get in there and knock someone's head off and uh and be good so that's gonna be a big difference for you right going from five-minute rounds to two minute rounds yeah dude i've been hit mitts for two minute rounds and i'm like i feel like i just started right right i could go you know i feel good are you training two minutes are you doing longer so that you feel like two minutes is nothing we're gonna mix both in and and my thought process on that is um even when i was trading for five-minute rounds we'd do five-minute rounds i don't we would do more of them but i want my body my mind to get used to exactly what it's gonna feel like because of that reason like holy [ __ ] it's already over right you know so i need to know like
you know basically where i'm at in the round you know and i want to get used to that but i'm definitely going to do some longer stuff too or we'll do you know like ten two minute rounds so you're basically just doing more of the exact same thing to where it's you know you hit those five and it's like check you go another another full fight here so how long did you have to think about this before you decided to do it well like i said it's been a whole year process kind of going back and forth uh my wife absolutely hates it she's like you're [ __ ] nuts but you know she's married a fighter yeah i know and that's what she's gotta she's gotta remember that right but uh um no man it's it's definitely something we sat down and had to figure out because it's you know it is something that's pretty brutal and my my argument to her was this like a ufc glove maybe a quarter of an inch of leather half inch of leather over my knuckles i mean the concussion is not going to be much different if anything i i think we're obviously dealing with a sharper object hitting you so cuts are probably going to be a lot more prevalent but as far as the concussion of you know getting hit you know i don't think it's going to be much different i also don't have to worry about a baseball bat head kick going whipping through and cracking me in the dome either or someone's a big knee so you know there's a lot of other things in the mma game that i think are a lot more dangerous but um you know for me it's just it had to make sense obviously the numbers they were throwing out in the beginning didn't make sense for me i have you know other businesses that are are doing really well right now that are are something that i can do for the rest of my life and not have to ever fight but i have that itch to get in there compete still in it i might as well do
it now while i'm still in my prime and i have that opportunity because like i said when i start hitting 38 39 you know maybe these opportunities have come and gone and nobody even really cares to see me fight anymore or you know i just don't feel good enough to get in there and do it so it's interesting how they're going after so many former ufc fighters i mean it's smart right these people already famous you know they got paige van zandt hector lombard um you now who else is over there i know uh leonard garcia who else uh uh rochelle uh she just fought paige uh rachel ostavis yeah yeah did you say her sorry no no no i didn't sir um uh so they're doing a smart thing where they're getting popular fires or who are you know known for ufc fights mostly and then just introducing the bare knuckle world to them and i know it's growing right i mean it's it's people are paying attention now they're watching a lot of fights yeah i know uh forbes just did a write-up saying it's the fastest growing combat sport in the world right now you know well i always thought that like it was weird that you could else elbow somebody in the face you could head kick somebody with a bare shin you can knee him in the nose with no pads but your hands are covered with a pad i was i was like but i used to say like why don't we just go bare knuckle because first of all to make grappling more realistic like submissions you could sink in chokes and stuff much easier but then i saw chris lieben versus uh who is it dakota what's his name anyway chris leban's face got destroyed it was crazy the cuts and i was like oh maybe bare knuckles pretty [ __ ] it is and i think that's you know you're gonna have a lot of blood which probably makes it pretty entertaining for a lot of people but yeah cuts are definitely going to be there
i mean like you said elbows though in the ufc like oh yeah up against the kids slashed somebody or even off off their back and you're on top dropping elbows i mean those cut probably more than knuckles i would imagine but yeah um i think you get hit a lot more with punches than you do with elbows in a fight and that's probably where more more cuts would come in but how many of these things you gonna have man so so here's the situation i'm still under ufc contract i still have fights on my ufc contract so you know there still is a possibility that i come back and maybe i want to do one or two more ufc fights after this we'll see i'm going to get in there and ufc giving you a green light to do this is that how it works or so which is super cool to use i mean they basically could have just said [ __ ] you you're not competing well they kind of said [ __ ] you to george st pierre when he wanted to fight oscar de la hoya well that's because it's oscar i know but come on um that's a great payday for george i know i know um and in fact some of that stuff was in the works for me like we talked i was my name was thrown in there with oscar really yeah which would have been freaking cool just to say you get in there and box a guy like oscar but yeah they they wanted nothing to do with any of that stuff so you know yeah for them ufc and oscar do not get dana and oscar do not get along yeah what is the source of that do you know i don't know but i always see them talking [ __ ] to each other it's so dumb yeah but so dumb yeah like who you know why what is what's happening i don't know but luckily the payday i was talking about getting with them is what i'm getting and bare knuckle now and you know obviously it would have been cooler to say that i'm boxing oscar de la hoya but catch new episodes of the joe rogan experience for free only on spotify watch back catalog jre
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