Chad “Money” Mendes (17-3) was recently defeated by “The Notorious” Conor Mcgregor in possibly the most hyped contests of all time, the main event for the Interim UFC Featherweight Championship at UFC 189. Mendes dominated the opening round, securing take downs at will, but Mcgregor would prove too much for the Alpha Male prodigy in the next round, winning via TKO. Bloody Elbow was able to catch up with Mendes who lobbied for a rematch with Conor and discussed his next contest against Frankie Edgar.
“You know, this is a fight that I know a lot of people have been wanting to see for a long time now,” Mendes said. “I’ve watched Frankie fight for a long time and he’s always a guy that, because of his size, I figured that as soon as I start working my way to the top of the division, as soon as he comes down we’re gonna be there together and the time is now – I’m excited for this fight man. Frankie, he’s a scrapper, I feel we kind of have similar styles. He’s the type of guy with great cardio who pushes the pace, uses his wrestling a lot and kinda mixes up his boxing with his wrestling.”
Chad blames his late notice call for the fight on the loss:
“I mean, that [the short training camp] was 110% the factor of the loss in that fight,” Mendes affirmed. “You know, I’ve seen him saying like ‘oh it doesn’t matter if he took a short camp for this fight, you know it was the body kicks that slowed him down and stopped him.’ None of those body kicks hurt at all. There wasn’t a time where any of those that landed where I was like ‘argh, my liver,’ you know. There was no type of body pain for that.”
“I know it, he knows it, everybody knows it – you know, I go out there with a full camp destroy that guy 10 out of 10 times. Obviously going into that fight I’m gonna talk it up. You know ‘I’m in great shape, I’ve been training.’ Yea, I’ve been training and keeping a decent shape but there was no way you could ever be in a five round fight shape, you know, in two weeks. Like I said, he knows it, every body knows it – full camp I destroy that guy.”
“He better not try to ditch out of this fight whether he wins or loses and try to go up to 155 or some stupid thing. You know, I feel like he owes me a rematch with a full fight camp, and err, let’s see if he’s man enough to do that.”
