Chad Mendes - Bare knuckle boxing and business

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Our guest for today’s podcast is Chad Edward Mendes. He is a professional bare-knuckle boxer from the United States of America and was previously a mixed martial artist and collegiate wrestler signed under the Bare-Knuckle Fighting Championship (BKFC). Chad rose to prominence in the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s (UFC) featherweight division and was a three-time UFC championship challenger. While competing as a Cal Poly Mustang, he was a two-time NCAA Division I All-American and Pac-10 Conference champion in folk style wrestling.  </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Chad bravely shares his struggles, his inspiration to be a professional wrestler, and what prompted him to build his own business entirely different from his chosen career.</span></p> <p><strong>[02:55]</strong> <strong>Why should I listen to you?</strong></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I’m simply going to tell you a bit of myself and hope that something I say motivates you or inspires you to push yourself to the next level in your life and generally make progress anywhere. I’ve had some odd things happen in my life from a young age to now, and some people enjoy listening while others don’t. However, I hope something motivates you. That is most likely what I would say.</span></p> <p><strong>[03:53]</strong> <strong>How did you get to this point where this is what you do? What was the upbringing that created this individual with such raw drive like you do positively?</strong></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I believe my father had a significant influence on my sports career and helped me get to where I am now. I was raised in a large family, yet legally it was only my mother and father. I was the sole child, and they divorced and remarried. I began wrestling when I was five, and he was a coach.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">[04:41] I wrestled every year until I graduated from high school and was offered a recruiting chance at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. I wrestled there and gr