Black Belts and Backpack Zips: Juan Quesada Finds Peace Through Fighting and Flowers
Juan Quesada is like an artichoke—tough, spiny, unapologetically armored on the outside, but peel back the layers and you'll find a heart that’s seasoned by struggle and softened by survival. From the moment the entrepreneur walks in, there's an energy—quiet, confident, forged in fire. “I just look like this, bro. I'm a cooler cat than Heathcliff,” he says, with a half-smile that’s seen both the streets and the spotlight.
Long before he launched Backpack Boyz—one of the most recognizable cannabis brands on the West Coast—Quesada was grinding. Selling tapes and CDs as a kid turned into hustling weed, then other things, then back to weed. He doesn’t glorify his criminal past, but he doesn’t hide from it either. On changing lanes to cannabis exclusively, “I just wanted to be cool. I wanted to make a living. I wanted to not have to look over my shoulder. I wanted when a fucking cop got behind me, I wanted to not give a fuck.”
From ages 18 to 25, he was locked up more often than not. “Between those years I was probably only home, maybe about a grand total of 18, 19 months,” he recalls. The pattern was brutal—out for a month, back for six.
Everything changed when Quesada discovered mixed martial arts. It started at a friend’s house, with a guy who wouldn’t stop bragging about his skills in the sport. “He was just talking a lot about him being really good in the sport of MMA,” Quesada recalls. “It was really actually kind of arrogant [now] that I look back at it… I seen [sic] them kind of giving it up to this dude. So I was like, ‘Damn, he must be kind of good.’”
But Quesada wasn’t sold. “I don't really feel like he possesses what I possess inside. So if he got good, then I could probably really get good.” Intrigued but skeptical, he asked the guy where he trained. “He told me about it, where to go. He kind of laughed when he told me… but now I understand why. It's because throughout my 20 years of doing it, people always ask me about doing it… and they never show up.”
Quesada did show up. “I went and I never looked back.”
Training gave him structure, purpose, and a new code to live by. “The second that I stop training… is when I tend to start making bozo decisions,” he admits. “That shit did everything. That shit changed my life all the way, all the way around the board. And I feel like I owe everything to that.”
His commitment was unbreakable. “The only time I've ever not trained or still to this day right now, the only way I won't train is if I'm injured,” he says. “For me, it's my life.”
He also found himself through failure. “For a long time, I was getting the shit beat out of me for the longest,” Quesada says. “I was the nail for the longest, longest amount of time. And I think that's what ultimately turned—it turned my mind into what it is—is from being the nail.” Quesada would become the hammer.
That humility translated into discipline. “I would say for me [it] would be mostly just to not be around the wrong people anymore,” he says. “Not surrounding myself with the shit that just is not going to take me to the next step that I need to be. Simple as that.”
That same discipline led him to build Backpack Boyz, brick by brick, starting with a delivery business in 2016. “I didn't even realize it was this,” he says now. “The story of this brand is as organic as you can get. I never force-fed nothing [sic]. I've been lucky by the grace of God to get everything—it was there.”
Today, Backpack Boyz operates multiple locations in California, with a new one opening this 4/20 in Cathedral City—formerly a Dr. Greenthumb shop. “It is pretty cool,” he admits. “I'm excited. So you know what it is—I try to stay as calm as I'm staying while I'm talking to you, but inside like hell yeah, I'm happy.”
Quesada still trains. Still competes. But now he’s just as focused on flavors as he is footwork. “I like good fucking weed,” he says. “That fucking is grown the way that it's supposed to be grown and tastes the way that it's supposed to taste.”
He's currently working on exclusive new drops with renowned cultivator Preferred Gardens and the legendary Derry Brett of Barney’s Farm. “That right there was a new pheno that was grown by Preferred Gardens. We're calling it Candy Paint,” he says of one standout strain. “It's a candy fumes times permanent marker cross, and it's fucking amazing.” Shout-out to Ryan Bartholomew of Doja (our last issue’s cover!) for the genetics.
Another pheno from the same cross is being released as Acetone. “We're calling it Acetone, but it's basically another pheno of the same cross, the Candy Fumes x Permanent Marker and it's fucking amazing.”
There’s also a new strain called LFG (“Let’s Fucking Go”), a Zebert x Zkittlez cross that Derry passed along. “I took those cuts, gave those to Dave [Polley, founder of Preferred Gardens]. I'm looking forward to seeing what Dave is going to do with those.”
Quesada’s reverence for Derry runs deep. “Derry’s journey and Derry’s movement is a crazy one. And you judge the book by his cover and you'll never know the fucking stories that this man got,” he says. “You sit down, you talk with him a little bit and he shares some of the stuff… some of the stories that he's told me, I was just like, ‘Yo, I would've never expected you to have these stories.’”
“He was someone that was really risking it at a time when it just wasn't cool to do it. It just didn't have anywhere near what it has now. He truly had a love for the plant and a love for breeding and a love for what it was that the industry needs for a long time.”
“He's a good dude. He's respectful. He has a great head on his shoulders. He doesn't deal with no bullshit [sic]. He reminds me of, like I said, of what I want to be when I reach his age in a lot of ways.”
His ultimate goal? “Perfect case scenario would be [to] sell the company. It goes federally legal, right? So boom… Coca-Cola and Marlboro and all these motherfuckers coming in.” But he doesn’t want to walk away—just scale it with integrity. “I would still be on salary to do what I do and to still pump it like I pump it and to still create like a motherfucker creates for it and to just still, because I got that.”
That dream is rooted in the same truth he found on the mat: consistency, vision, and ownership. “I'm going to have that drive for this shit in me until the day that I die.”
Backpack Boyz may be a business—but for Juan Quesada, it’s also a path, a platform, and a promise to do better than the day before.
For more information, visit backpackboyz.com @officialbackpackboyz @quesada925
