Wrestlers Mercedes Varnado, Kalisto Launch New CBD Company

I also have a younger brother with disabilities who has autism and tumors, who also takes CBD. And it helps everybody. We’re not just talking athletes.

We’re talking about every type of person in this world. It’s anti-inflammatory. And that’s the key message — once you fix the inflammation in your body, that’s when everything starts to change.

C&T Today: Do you see a lot of athletes in the locker room, behind the scenes, using CBD?

MV: Behind the scenes right now, the whole natural method, like CBD, is where it’s at. We are giving our product to everybody that we’re working with. We’re educating them all.

And there are so many people in the locker room that I gave CBD to and they’re just like, “Wait, what is this? Oh my God, this makes me feel good.” So you see, not even the culture in wrestling, the culture all over the world is changing.

They don’t want to go to Walgreens. They don’t want to go to CVS and go get their prescription anymore.

They want the natural method of feeling good. I feel with a lot of these new, easy pills that a lot of people take, they think “Hey, I gotta take this the rest of my life to make me feel a certain way.” No.

CBD is supposed to make you feel the way that you were born to be feeling, the natural way that you’re supposed to be feeling. It’s just supposed to make you feel how God created you to feel. 

C&T Today: What’s something you found yourself wishing for in a CBD product?

AV: What do I want to see? What we’re working on currently is trying to make the product as healthy as possible.

For example, when we were trying to come up with the gummies, most gummies are filled with added sugar, red 40, and blue 20. So that contradicts the benefits of the gummy itself. Because you’re adding all these inflammatory products, but you’re trying to build an anti-inflammatory gummy.

So we’re like, how can we make it better? How can we remove all these processed sugars, all these artificial flavors, from the product?

MV: The difference between us and a lot of people is that our flavors with our tinctures are absolutely incredible. I legit take it every day.

Our flavors are delicioso [sic]. I put it in my water, I put it in my juice, I put it in my drinks, I put it in my protein and I’ve never seen the flavors that we have with our tinctures with any other CBD company.

Like when you taste CBD, you taste that hemp taste. People right then and there don’t want to take it just because of the nasty flavor. With our flavor, it’s so easy to digest and add to, like Manny suggested, food, drinks, proteins.

There are so many different ways that you can take our products, whether it’s tincture forms, gummies, or protein [powder]. Having so many different products and flavors can help introduce different people to CBD that fits their taste.

C&T Today: Kanndela has an initiative called “Giving Light to the World.” What’s the purpose of that project?