“Weight cutting is my least favorite part” – Chad Mendes perceives fighting at 155-lbs is much easier than at 145
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Chad Mendes
Chad Mendes has been sitting at the sidelines after retiring from MMA following his TKO loss to current featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski at UFC 232 back in 2018. But he actually retired the coming year in the summer of 2019.
‘Money’ has now decided to come out of retirement but not to fight in the octagon but rather to try his hand at bare-knuckle fighting and has chosen to sign a multi-fight deal with BKFC. He’s now set to face Joshuah Alvarez in a 155-pound bout on Feb. 19 at BKFC: Knucklemania 2.
With his debut in bare-knuckle fighting just days to go, he sat for an interview with Mike Bohn of MMA Junkie to speak about his choice of coming back from retirement.
Mendes was asked how he was able to balance increasing his weight as he had only fought at the featherweight division when he was part of the UFC which is also known as the 145-pound division to which he replied, “It’s definitely going to be a lot easier than 45’s. I was cutting a lot to 45’s. I mean I walked around about 68, you known on the upper end, when I was cutting down the featherweight.”
“Now I’m walking around you know, 73 – 74 now so, a little bit bigger but about the same. So, I definitely am excited about that part because I think the weight cutting is my least favorite part about this, always has been for wrestling and fighting but I mean I’ve been sticking to a strict diet this whole camp and feeling good, weights down so it shouldn’t be an issue.”
Chad Mendes finds the best part about the new job to be the dirty boxing that he can use
Chad Mendes says that he’s put his head down and just focused on getting a debut win as he is soon to be seen fighting bare-knuckled.
Speaking to MMA Junkie about how his training and camp have been he said, “You can’t spar bare-knuckle. We do mitt work bare-knuckle. A lot of technical stuff bare knuckle. But yeah, we definitely don’t let him rip bare-knuckle on that. But you know it’s good man. Like I said it’s been a long training session, a long preparation for this fight but it’s crazy to see the improvements from when we started like I said almost a year ago.“
He said that the entire camp has basically focused on his boxing and he’s glad that he’s able to use his explosive power over his wrestling.
“It’s just train boxing. You know boxing, boxing, boxing. The best part about this is you can dirty box which is great for me because obviously with the wrestling background, getting caller ties on guys you know the uppercut, use the explosive power right there and close is you know my bread and butter. So, we’ve been doing a lot of that type of training but really just a ton of boxing. You know all the normal stuff you do for any type of boxing fight.”
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Nimish Ganapathy
(135 Articles Published)