Chad Mendes Reflects On Team Alpha Male Split With Duane Ludwig: ‘I Miss Training With Duane’

Chad Mendes reflects on the split between Team Alpha Male and Duane Ludwig, and reacts to TJ Dillashaw's recent win over Cory Sandhagen

Chad Mendes Tj Dillashaw
Photos via Instagram @chadmendes @bangmuaythai

When Team Alpha Male was going through turmoil and tensions were high between them, and Duane Ludwig and TJ Dillashaw, Chad Mendes largely stayed out of it. Now he looks back on that split, and his time training with Ludwig.

Mendes has been a member of Team Alpha Male for years, long before they had a falling out with Ludwig and Dillashaw. When all of that was going down, he was one of the more quiet members of the gym, not really getting involved in any of the drama.

However when speaking on Joe Rogan’s podcast recently, He took some time to reflect on training with Duane, and how everything went down. He agreed with Joe that Duane made the gym better, and says that he misses training with Duane.

“I miss training with Duane. That whole situation with Faber (was very upsetting). I stayed out of the middle of it. I have a ton of respect Faber and I have a ton of respect for Duane,” Mendes said.

“(Dillashaw) took to probably the best, for sure. It worked perfect for TJ, his style of wrestling, his body style. TJ is one of those guys that gets obsessed too, and him and Duane Really missed on that notepad writing, really figuring everything out. TJ has that memory that really comes along with it, where he can remember all of these crazy combos, and then get out there and actually perform it. That takes a special athlete, to be able to see that thing on paper, train it, and then actually hit it in a fight.”

 

Chad Mendest Reacts to TJ Dillashaw vs Cory Sandhagen

TJ Dillashaw, former teammate to Chad Mendes, recently returned from a 2-year USADA suspension, and won a close split decision over Cory Sandhagen. There is a point in that fight, where TJ seemed to be trapped in a deep triangle choke, and Joe Rogan told Chad that he thought TJ would tap.

“The wild thing about his fight with Sandhagen was Sandhagen had him in a f—king triangle, locked up and I was like, ‘Man, I wonder if (Cory) had some pointers on how to finish that better, that would’ve been it.’ Because it seemed locked the f—k in,” Rogan said to Mendes.

“He threw a knee, right and T.J. takes him down and in the process of taking down, he locks it up. Fully locked up triangle early in the fight and I was like, ‘Man, I feel like he got this.’ I thought T.J. was gonna tap.”

Mendes goes on to say that he knew that this was going to be a tough outing for Dillashaw before the fight took place. He said that he was impressed with the fact that the former champion did not take any sort of tune up for his first fight in over 2 years.

“That dude’s a beast, I was worried for TJ going into that fight. A lot of people were like TJ is just going to go in there and destroy… I definitely knew this is going to be a tough fight, and it was a tough fight coming off of that long,” Mendes said.

“TJ is not getting a tune-up fight, this is going to make or break, show everyone that TJ’s back or TJ’s going to have to fight a couple times and get back… I guarantee they’re going to run it back. You’re going to see that at least one more time.”

While it will not be in MMA, Chad Mendes recently announced that he will be making a comeback of his own, under the BKFC banner. It will be interesting to see how he looks in his return.

Published on August 5, 2021 at 3:17 pm
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