Dillon Danis was reportedly booted from Madison Square Garden last night.
There was a lot of action inside the cage last night at UFC 268. And, according to MMA Junkie’s John Morgan, there was also a little bit of action back stage, too.
The veteran MMA reporter posted on twitter that MMA manager Ali Abdelaziz slapped Dillon Danis at the event and that Danis was then removed from the building.
Ali Abdelaziz slapped Dillon Danis backstage tonight at #UFC268 according to multiple people who witnessed the incident. Danis was then apparently removed from the building.
Reached out to @AliAbdelaziz00, but he declined to comment.
— John Morgan (@MMAjunkieJohn) November 7, 2021
In a since deleted tweet UFC commentator Michael Bisping seemingly corroborating that Danis had been struck and removed from the arena. Bisping also claimed that Danis had been banned from all future UFC events.
— 0m?rio Lxst Soldi?r (@humeroro) November 7, 2021
It’s not too surprising that an encounter between Abdelaziz and Danis resulted in blows. The pair have attacked each other online and through the press on multiple occasions. Danis was also a key figure in the Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor rivalry that boiled over at UFC 229 in 2018.
After he defeated McGregor with a neck crank, Nurmagomedov famously flew out of the cage and attacked Danis, who was in McGregor’s corner for the fight. That incident sparked brawls inside and outside of the cage, as well as throughout the T-Mobile Arena.
Danis, an accomplished BJJ practitioner, is 2-0 in MMA. He debuted in the cage at Bellator 198 in 2018, defeating Kyle Walker with a toe hold. He followed that up with an armbar submission of Max Humphrey the following year.
Since then Danis’ MMA career seems to have been put on pause. He most recently made news for getting involved in a scuffle at a restaurant in New Jersey. Danis was charged with disorderly conduct over that incident.
This isn’t the first time Abdelaziz has been accused of striking someone at an MMA event. In 2019 he was charged with misdemeanour battery after an incident involving fellow MMA manager Abe Kawa at a PFL event. Those charges were later dismissed.