Famed actor and martial arts Sensei Steven Seagal has sided with UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov for his actions during UFC 229’s brawl and Dillon Danis isn’t happy.
In case you forgot, Khabib parlayed his main event submission win over Conor McGregor at UFC 229 this past October into an out-of-cage brawl with Danis and Team Mac. Khabib’s actions stemmed in part from the personal attacks that McGregor launched leading up to their highly-anticipated title fight.
The post-fight brawl, which is arguably the most bizarre scene in MMA history, ended up costing Khabib a nine-month suspension and a whopping $500,000 (which is a quarter of his UFC 229 fight purse).
When asked about UFC 229 in a recent interview with Submission Radio (shown above), Seagal, who has been intertwined in martial arts since the 70’s, sympathized with the undefeated Russian champion and refused to condemn his post-fight actions.
“I thought that Khabib outclassed Conor in every way,” said Seagal. “I thought even in the stand up with the punching, he out-punched Conor. I thought his ground game was better. I thought that he was just a better fighter all around and I thought that he just really, really dominated Conor in every way and he won the fight fair and square. Do I condemn him for what he did after the fight? No. Even as a diplomat I will say no. If you badmouth someone’s family, their wife, their children, their mother, their father, their country, their religion, all bets are off, and I would have done the same thing.”
As you could have imagined, Danis, who was the person who Khabib jumped out of the cage to attack, didn’t take too kindly to Seagal’s outlook on UFC 229’s melee. The Bellator MMA fighter wasted little time reaching out to his own promotion and trying to set up a fight with the 66-year-old actor (no, seriously).
me vs seagal set it up @BellatorMMA https://t.co/dQ1KCLDUra
— Dillon Danis (@dillondanis) January 31, 2019
Adding to the circus was Bellator MMA itself, which flagged down its fans to ask who would win a matchup between the two.
Is this really the world we live in?
Unfortunately, this entire situation plays directly into Danis’ social media ego, which has been out of control for quite some time. The talented submission expert has just begun his professional MMA career yet seems to put his foot in his mouth at every turn in effort to shadow McGregor’s popularity and allure.
I hate to ask, but who wins this clash of MMA titans?