With his 15 second win at Misfits X Series 22 on Saturday night, Dillon Danis is now the first Misfits MMA light heavyweight champion. But he seems very willing to drop that belt and move on up to the UFC if possible.
While Danis called out Nate Diaz for a Misfits fight during the post-fight press conference, footage from his locker room after his win had him discussing a switch to UFC and fighting Islam Makhachev or Khamzat Chimaev.
“I will get those fights, because the UFC right now is lacking stars,” Danis said. “I’m the only one you seen this whole week sell this whole thing. I wanted to sell it more, but there were some things that went into it. The UFC wants to see me more tame. But people enjoy what I’m doing. And the fight, it’s not just the fight, it’s the whole package. It’s the storyline. It’s the build-up. And in the UFC, that’s lacking. And these guys are boring as f—k.”
“So I’ll take on anybody first, like Kevin Holland,” he continued. “If they want to give me a top 15, top 10, number one, I don’t care who it is, I’ll beat them up.”
“People don’t understand, no one’s ever fought a grappler like me. Look what happened to Khamzat when he fought [Gilbert Burns]. I’m a way better grappler than Durhino. So I think that would be an easy fight. Islam, there’s some revenge there, because he punched me in the back of the head after the Khabib altercation.”
The only problem? The UFC has already given Danis a hard pass, with Dana White wanting nothing to do with the BJJ ace’s “total unprofessional clown show.“ Danis said he was being ‘more tame’ for this event, but that didn’t stop him from getting into a fist fight with main event fighter Luke Rockhold. Add in Logan Paul’s PRIME as a major sponsor for UFC, and we just don’t see “El Jefe” getting a call from UFC matchmakers.
We’re going to need to see a lot more from Danis in MMA before we can start to take his claims of dethroning Islam Makhachev or Khamzat Chimaev seriously. Can Misfits find him the opponents to build his case?
