Dillon Danis gets into so many outside-the-cage brawls that it’s hard to keep track. Here’s what happened when he and Nate Diaz clashed at UFC 281 in New York City.
Dillon Danis appeared on The MMA Hour this week to promote his upcoming January boxing match with KSI, and it resulted in the most mutually antagonistic interview we’ve ever witnessed. Host Ariel Helwani was quick to criticize Danis for his past two years of online trolling, and Danis reacted by continuing to troll Helwani in person.
It was a total car crash of a segment, and we recommend you watch it. But if you were just curious to know more about the near-brawl between Dillon Danis and current free agent Nate Diaz at UFC 281, “El Jefe” went into detail on the two separate altercations that went down that night in November.
“So we went out to get a couple of beers, me, a couple of friends, Craig Jones,” Danis recalled. “And then I see the guys that [Nate] hangs out with, the smaller guy, Spanish [Chris Avila]. And I knew this dude was just like Anthony Taylor [who punched Danis at a November 24th press conference], looking to get as much attention as they can get. And he’s with Nate, and they’re coming, they’re coming, and I’m like ‘Okay, this is gonna be whatever.’”
“Then Nate is looking at me and I’m like ‘What’s up?’ and then his boy is like ‘Yo f—k you, man!’ This is inside the arena. And I don’t know what his boy’s saying because they’re all like, they don’t really make sense, they’re just punch drunk. So I have no idea what he’s saying. And then Nate throws this beer on me… it was actually a tequila soda, so that wasn’t actually too bad. So I took my beer and hit him in the face with it, and then everyone started brawling, the cops got involved.”
“One of my friends slipped on the beer, he slipped,” Danis continued. “Nate was trying to separate it. I was going after Nate, and Nate separated it. The whole thing happened, he walked away, and I said, ‘F— you, walk away’ or something. We kinda got into it, and he starts coming back, and then the cops took him out.”
“The [cop] was like ‘I used to train at Marcelo’s [Garcia, Danis’ old coach], I got you, don’t worry about it, I saw that he started it.’ Because he threw his drink first. Tequila soda, it’s not that bad, it’s just seltzer water. It was very uncomfortable, I was pissed off about it, but I got him back with a beer and a beer is much worse because it has a stain and smells.”
The second incident with Diaz occurred after UFC 281 was over and Danis was outside on the street talking to MMA manager Audie Attar.
“So the night is over, we go outside,” Danis said. “I’m talking to Audie, and then I get hit with an empty Snapple bottle or something? So in my head there’s probably some hecklers, because there’s a bunch of fans from the UFC there. Is this a heckler or a homeless guy? And I turn around and it’s Nate, and he’s just screaming and doing s—.”
“Audie’s flipping out because his kids are there. He’s like ‘My kids are here, don’t do this.’ And they’re crying and I’m standing there and we’re going back and forth and I’m like ‘Yo, his kids are here, if you want let’s go to the next street. Let’s not do it in front of the kids, they’re freaking out.’”
“We keep going back and forth, back and forth, we’re talking s—, and he comes up and he’s like ‘Hey man, I always got respect for you, Audie,’ I don’t know what he was saying. So I’m behind Audie and [Nate] goes ‘Yo don’t come that close to me.’ I said ‘What are you gonna do about it?’ And then he kind of slapped my friend, and I came to him and I was like ‘Let’s go over here to this street.’ ‘Okay I’ll meet you over there.’ And then it just .. that was it.”
Danis believes this is just the beginning of a feud with Nate Diaz that will culminate in a real fight.
“Apparently he wants to have a boxing match with me after the KSI fight,” Dillon said. When asked if he was interested in the match-up, he said “100%, MMA or boxing.”
Danis will first have to get past YouTuber turned boxer KSI when they fight at the SSE Arena in London, England on January 14th. The odds currently have KSI as a -210 favorite over +170 dog Danis, largely based off the complete lack of striking the Brazilian jiu jitsu expert has displayed in his two career MMA fights.