JRE MMA Show #113 with Chad Mendes
Chad Mendes (guest), Joe Rogan (host)
In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, featuring Chad Mendes and Joe Rogan, JRE MMA Show #113 with Chad Mendes explores chad Mendes Returns For Bare-Knuckle Boxing, Redefines Life After UFC Joe Rogan and Chad Mendes cover Mendes’ transition from elite MMA fighter to entrepreneur and hunter, and why he’s now returning to competition in bare-knuckle boxing. They dig into fighter pay, weight cutting, long careers in combat sports, and brain health in training. A large portion explores hunting, wildlife management, and food—especially how diet changes, carnivore eating, and wild game affect Mendes’ health and psoriasis. The conversation closes with Mendes’ business ventures, including guided hunts, freeze‑dried meals, and a high-end beef company, plus details of his upcoming bare-knuckle debut.
Chad Mendes Returns For Bare-Knuckle Boxing, Redefines Life After UFC
Joe Rogan and Chad Mendes cover Mendes’ transition from elite MMA fighter to entrepreneur and hunter, and why he’s now returning to competition in bare-knuckle boxing. They dig into fighter pay, weight cutting, long careers in combat sports, and brain health in training. A large portion explores hunting, wildlife management, and food—especially how diet changes, carnivore eating, and wild game affect Mendes’ health and psoriasis. The conversation closes with Mendes’ business ventures, including guided hunts, freeze‑dried meals, and a high-end beef company, plus details of his upcoming bare-knuckle debut.
Key Takeaways
Channel competitive drive into new ventures after retiring from sports.
Mendes describes falling into a brief depression after leaving MMA until he poured that same intensity into building brands and companies, which restored his sense of purpose.
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Plan for a second career and financial resilience beyond fight purses.
The discussion highlights how canceled bouts, bad decisions, and injuries can erase income, underscoring the need for fighters to build businesses, savings, or insurance structures outside the cage.
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Minimize brain trauma in training to extend performance longevity.
Mendes contrasts old-school hard sparring—where teammates regularly got concussed—with more modern approaches emphasizing controlled sparring, technical drilling, and longevity-minded coaching.
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Reconsider extreme weight cuts; fighting closer to natural weight can improve performance.
He recounts drastic cuts to 145 and wrestling at 125, noting he felt best when he moved up weight classes and argues MMA should adopt more weight classes and discourage massive dehydration.
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Use elimination diets experimentally to troubleshoot chronic conditions.
Mendes’ psoriasis dramatically improved within weeks on a strict carnivore diet; by slowly reintroducing foods (fruit, some grains, honey) he learned which items flare symptoms and which don’t.
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Hunting can be an ethical, resilient way to source high-quality meat.
They explain that wild game lives naturally and dies quickly, in contrast with industrial meat, and that learning to hunt gives people food security and a deeper connection to ecosystems.
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Predator and game populations require informed management, not emotion-driven policy.
Through examples of bears, mountain lions, coyotes, and deer, they argue that bans on hunting apex predators often backfire—leading to livestock losses, pet deaths, and ecological imbalance.
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Notable Quotes
“After fighting, I had to channel that energy somewhere or I almost fell into a depression.”
— Chad Mendes
“One of the most difficult things for a fighter is stopping fighting, because you don’t know what to do with all this intense energy.”
— Joe Rogan
“I’m coming back to fighting…but I’m not coming back to MMA. I’m coming back to boxing—and I think we’re gonna throw some bare knuckle in there.”
— Chad Mendes
“I’m so against big weight cuts, man. I fucking hate it.”
— Chad Mendes
“They never talk about your health—losing weight, exercise, vitamins. It’s just a bunch of fat people eating McDonald’s trying to get a vaccine.”
— Joe Rogan
Questions Answered in This Episode
How will Chad Mendes’ power-wrestling and boxing-heavy MMA style translate to bare-knuckle rules and two-minute rounds?
Joe Rogan and Chad Mendes cover Mendes’ transition from elite MMA fighter to entrepreneur and hunter, and why he’s now returning to competition in bare-knuckle boxing. ...
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What practical model could fighters or promoters use to create an insurance or protection system for canceled fights and bad judging decisions?
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If MMA adopted more weight classes and stricter weight-cut rules, how might that change fighter safety, fight quality, and career length?
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To what extent is a strict carnivore or meat-centric diet sustainable and advisable for high-output athletes over many years?
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How can hunting advocates better communicate the science of predator and game management to urban voters who oppose hunting on emotional grounds?
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Transcript Preview
(drumming music plays) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays) All right, we're up and running. Money Mendez, what's up?
What ... What's happening? Yeah. (laughs)
Good to see you, brother.
Thanks for having me.
Finally, man. We've been talking about doing this a long time.
Too long, bro.
Oh, Jesus.
Whoa. (laughs)
Look at that, Jamie. We splattered. I tried to, uh-
Oh, we got it sorted.
... push the plunger down on the, uh, French press and it, it splattered everywhere. So if my microphone explodes-
(laughs)
... we know why. Sorry, this, uh, this table needed a little seasoning.
Mm-hmm.
Needed some color.
I'm gonna throw one over here. I'll get this thing.
It's all right. So, uh, what's happening, man? How you doing? How's the retirement life?
Oh, man.
Well, retirement from fighting, but-
Yeah, not ...
But maybe not really.
No, man. I'm actually more busy now not fighting. I'm actually, uh ... 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, uh ... We got a ton of stuff going on, a lot of stuff on the plate. My wife's about to kill me, but ...
(laughs)
(laughs) But we got some shit going.
What, for y- you're working too much?
Too much, man. Way too much. But it's good, man. I, I ... You know, after fighting, I had to channel that, like, that energy of getting shit going and, and being successful somewhere. I almost felt like I jumped into a little bit of a depression there for, like, a couple weeks after, because I had, like, no sense of doing, you know.
Right.
And so I was like, "Fuck it. I'm gonna start just gr- trying to grow a couple brands and, and building a couple companies and see what happens." So I was like, honed all my energy onto that stuff, and, uh, uh, it definitely took over. So it's, it's been nice. It's been fun being able to just basically channel that stuff into that and let it rip.
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-
Mm-hmm.
... intense energy that you've been focusing your whole life i- in one way, and now all of a sudden ... And for a lot of fighters, it's like their whole identity, right?
It is, man. Like I, I started wrestling when I was five years old. Like I, I wrestled from five years old every single year up and through college, and then the day after graduation, drove up to Faber's, fucking lived in his ... Uh, I lived in his spare room and started training. Trained for three months and had my first pro fight, and then just basically-
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