Coker says he’ll get Danis ‘back in the rotation’ but is unsure the jiu jitsu fighter really wants to compete at Bellator’s level.
The stench hasn’t even come off the Dillon Danis vs. KSI boxing match cancellation, and already Danis is already angling to get another fight in Bellator.
The Brazilian jiu-jitsu ace was set to fight the YouTuber-turned-boxer on January 14th. But after skipping the initial press conference and then suggesting he may pull out due to a rehydration clause, the fight was scrapped less than two weeks out. According to Team KSI, Danis was ‘underprepared,’ had no coach, and was struggling to make weight.
“Fake news,” Danis replied on his Twitter account regarding the cancellation. “The truth will shock everyone.”
We still haven’t heard what ‘the truth’ may be as Danis has gone silent on social media since then. But according to Bellator president Scott Coker, Dillon has reached out to get an MMA fight in Bellator. In a new interview on The MMA Hour, Coker updated us on his former budding prospect.
“I tell you, that’s actually pretty funny,” he said when host Ariel Helwani called Danis ‘one of the biggest stars around sports right now.’ “They offered him to fight in London on the show coming up, and I guess they accepted and made a deal and we basically said okay. So when this thing fell apart I was very surprised.”
“He’s reached out to me and said ‘Hey, I want to fight,’ so we’ll try to get him in the rotation,” Coker continued. “But, it’s been a long time, a long time since he’s fought. And so I hope he’s been training and been doing his thing. But at the end of the day it’s really up to him, and how bad he wants to fight. And does he really want to compete at this level? It’s only something that only he could answer.”
Asked if he might not be interested in promoting Danis after all the bad press, Coker laughed.
“I’ll tell you, we have a contract with the guy and we’re going to honor the contract. Like I said, it’s going to be ‘Do you really want to fight?’ That’s really the question for me. To be honest. That’s the question. If you want to fight, come back in here, not that you start from ground zero, but you’re going to be in some tough competition. Test yourself, and let’s see what happens.”
Asked if he thought Danis would fight in Bellator again, Coker took a long silence and then said “TBD. To be determined.”
Danis is 2-0 in MMA and Bellator, and hasn’t fought since 2019. A serious knee injury and botched surgery has kept him out of all competition for years now, and it’s a real question as to whether he’ll ever return given how bad his leg is.