Dillon Danis says his run-in with Anthony Taylor was not staged.
In November, Taylor made headlines for punching Danis in a parking lot following the Misfits Boxing x DAZN Series 003 weigh-ins in Austin, Texas. Afterwards, Taylor gave his side of the altercation, saying Danis was being a “bully” so he decided to do something about it. But Danis disagrees.
“He’s a f****** loser. I didn’t even know who it was, to be honest with you,” Danis told Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour. “I thought it was a homeless guy chirping, yelling. We were going to record and this guy’s screaming, ‘You hurt my friend, KSI!’ And I was like, who the f*** is this. Just get the f*** out of here.”
“I didn’t even feel it,” Danis continued. “I didn’t have a mark. I didn’t even know who that is! [He punched me] because he’s a loser and he wanted to make a name for himself. It probably did. It’s probably the most — I don’t even know who that is, I swear.
“It’s the most f***** up because I was with two people that can’t fight. So we come outside, Hasim’s [Rahman Jr.s’] camp is trying to fight me, then there was a bunch of boxing guys that want to do it, and then a bunch of YouTubers, all just trying because they know that I’m the f****** king and that they’re going to get clicks after.”
Danis is a polarizing figure in combat sports. Once viewed as a top jiu-jitsu project, Danis struck up a friendship with Conor McGregor and made the move to MMA, adopting some of McGregor’s brash mannerisms in the process. That, along with the fact that he has not fought since 2019 due to a string of injuries, has not endeared him to many in the MMA and influencer boxing communities, and so when the video of his altercation with Taylor went viral, many celebrated Danis getting such a public comeuppance. But Danis says that video did not tell the whole story.
“The situation was actually weird,” Danis said. “
“The reason I was trying to pay attention to everybody, I’m with two guys that don’t know how to fight — my brother and one of my friends, at least my brother can, you know, but my other friend is just a normal dude that works a regular job — and we go outside and there’s f****** 30 people, 40 people trying to start a fight with me,” Danis said. “So all of a sudden the punches started throwing and I have to watch out for my brother to make sure he’s [okay], because there’s a bunch of guys, like fighters, are trying to jump him, then my friend is getting jumped, so I’m looking around trying to make sure everybody is okay, because obviously I’m the one that knows how to fight. So you see in the video, after he hits me, it was so crazy I don’t even know who hit me, because there were so many people. So then I saw my brother was on the ground, I came over, I smacked one guy, I don’t know who it was, some boxer.
Danis then talked through a video he posted of more of the altercation, showing the “good shot” he landed in return.
This was not the first public altercation Danis has had, and according to him, it likely won’t be the last. Danis says he now travels with security, and that he knew heading into the Misfits weigh-in that something like this would happen.
“I’m not worried about fighters and stuff, it just sucks when I want to go out and have a good time, I have to worry about some f****** idiots throwing s*** and talking,” Danis said. “100 percent [that happens].
“I told them about this when I went to this f****** press conference, whatever that s*** was. when I walked in, the guys are like in f****** awe and I’m like, dude, this is going to happen. They were like, ‘No, no, we’ve got security,’ and I was like alright, whatever. Because I don’t want to give these f****** no-names the opportunity. So it is what it is.”
Danis is currently scheduled to box YouTube personality KSI on Jan. 14 at Wembley Arena in London.
