Fast facts
- Division: Misfits MMA light heavyweight (175 lbs) champion; Real American Freestyle cruiserweight
- Record: 2-0 in Bellator MMA, 1-0 in Misfits MMA, 0-1 in pro boxing, 18-16 in submission grappling, 0-2 in RAF
- Nationality: American (Honduran mother, Armenian father)
- Team/gym: Came up at Marcelo Garcia’s academy in New York; signed to Global Fight League’s New York team under Ray Longo in 2025
- Notable wins: Joe Lauzon (D’arce choke, Metamoris 6), Jackson Sousa (inside heel hook, Polaris 4), Kyle Walker (toe hold, Bellator 198), Max Humphreys (armbar, Bellator 222), Warren Spencer (mounted guillotine, Misfits 22)
Long before the brawls and the lawsuits and the long list of fights that never happened, Dillon Danis was a freshman on the wrestling team at Parsippany Hills High School in New Jersey who, by his own account, “couldn’t do one pushup.” He found jiu-jitsu at 15, after a fight at school. By 17 he was making trips into New York to train at Marcelo Garcia’s academy, and at 19 he moved to the city for good, betting his life on a sport that pays almost nobody.
That bet is the part of his story people tend to skip, and I think it’s the most interesting part.
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The kid at Marcelo’s
Look at his IBJJF Pan No-Gi results in order and you can watch a young man climb. Third place at purple belt in 2012. Second at brown in 2013. Gold at brown in 2014, the same year he took silver at brown belt medio at the World Championships. He got his black belt at 21, and in 2016 he won the Pan No-Gi at black belt pesado. Nobody hands you that ladder. You earn every rung of it in rooms that smell like mat cleaner, against people who want the same thing you want.
He also took his game outside the tournament circuit. At Metamoris 6 on May 9, 2015, he choked out UFC veteran Joe Lauzon with a D’arce. At Polaris 4 on October 29, 2016, he finished Jackson Sousa with an inside heel hook. He lost a decision to Garry Tonon at Polaris 5. His grappling record sits at 18-16 with seven tournament wins, and the stat that tells you the most about him is this one: 11 of the 18 wins came by submission, and only one of the 16 losses did. Beat Danis on the mats and you’ll probably have to grind him on points, because catching him is hard.
Conor’s guy
In 2016, Conor McGregor brought him into camp as a coach and training partner for the Nate Diaz rematch at UFC 202, and the wider fight world learned his name. The visibility came with a cost. Because of how Danis was presenting himself in the media before that fight, Garcia disassociated him from the school where he’d grown up as a grappler.
He stayed with McGregor through the Khabib Nurmagomedov camp, and that’s how he ended up cageside at UFC 229. After Khabib submitted McGregor, he threw his mouthpiece toward Conor’s corner, scaled the cage, and appeared to leap at Danis, who threw punches back as the arena came apart. Joe Rogan later said that “Dillon (Danis) was absolutely insulting Khabib, saying something to him and provoking him and then Khabib just jumped over the cage and attacked him.” Danis stayed quiet until March 11, 2019, when he told Ariel Helwani on the ESPN MMA podcast that Khabib had been taunting him from the second or third round and was aggressive all night. He was fined $7,500 and suspended for seven months.
The cage, the ring, and the fights that didn’t happen
His own MMA career started cleanly. At Bellator 198 in 2018 he tapped Kyle Walker with a first-round toe hold, and at Bellator 222 in 2019 he armbarred Max Humphreys in the first round at a 175-pound catchweight. Then the record stalls. An injury pulled him out of a 2020 bout with Kegan Gennrich at Bellator 238. Helwani reported on October 21, 2023 that Bellator had released him. Danis said he wouldn’t fight MMA again unless the UFC signed him, and on November 15, 2023 he announced his retirement from combat sports.
Boxing was messier. He was booked to headline against KSI at Wembley Arena on January 14, 2023, and withdrew 10 days out, with Misfits promoter Mams Taylor saying he was “underprepared, he [Danis] has no coach, he might be struggling with weight.” Later that year he finally fought Logan Paul at Manchester Arena on October 14 and got disqualified in Round 6 after going for a takedown and an illegal choke. When the boxing got hard, the grappler reached for what he knew. His appeal went nowhere. During that build, he kept posting images of Paul’s fiancée, Nina Agdal, who sued and was granted a temporary restraining order.
The controversies stack up from there: a 2021 arrest after a fight with a nightclub bouncer in New Jersey, being removed from UFC 268 after Ali Abdelaziz slapped him, Coffeezilla’s 2023 accusation that he took money to promote crypto and NFT scams, and a cageside brawl with Abubakar Nurmagomedov and Magomed Zaynukov at UFC 322 at Madison Square Garden. Dana White said he wouldn’t press charges but suggested Danis wouldn’t be welcome at UFC events going forward.
The cancellations have their own causes. A planned Tony Ferguson fight died when GFL postponed its first two events. A KSI rebooking for March 2025 fell apart after KSI got sick. A Misfits title defense against Anthony Taylor in Dubai was scrapped when Danis wasn’t medically cleared after the UFC 322 incident. A grappling match with Arman Tsarukyan at Hype FC in May 2026 was cancelled for undisclosed reasons, and he pulled out of an August 2026 fight with Mike Perry 48 hours beforehand, later posting video of a stitched-up cut on his arm.
He did win something in between. At Misfits 22 in Manchester on August 30, 2025, he caught influencer Warren Spencer in a mounted guillotine 15 seconds into Round 1 and became the first Misfits MMA light heavyweight champion.
Where he stands
In 2026 he went to Real American Freestyle and picked the hardest door in the building twice. Colby Covington beat him by tech fall at RAF 07 on March 28. On June 13 he headlined RAF 10 against Khamzat Chimaev at a 205-pound catchweight and lost by pinfall, and Bloody Elbow reported that Chimaev’s team brawled with him afterward. He’s 0-2 in the promotion, and the people who beat him are Nos. 1 and 4 in RAF’s first crossover rankings.
He isn’t slowing down. This Friday, October 23, at RAF 14 in Las Vegas, Danis faces Tsarukyan for the inaugural RAF middleweight crossover title, with Chimaev vs. Robbie Lawler in the co-main and the card streaming in 40 AMC theaters. Tsarukyan is 7-1 in RAF and ranked No. 3, and he’s a brutal draw for a man still looking for his first win in the format.
Then comes the matchup I actually want to see. Hype Fighting announced that Danis will meet Covington in a submission-only grappling match at the Pala Pellicone in Rome on November 3, 11 days after Vegas. Covington is 5-0 in RAF and owns a tech fall over Danis, but as Bloody Elbow put it, the 38-year-old is stepping into the 33-year-old’s world this time. No points for control, no pins, just the thing a kid from Parsippany spent his teenage years riding trains into Manhattan to learn. If Danis has one fight left that tells us what he really is, it’s that one.
