Dillon Danis won’t be appearing at any future UFC events.
The always outspoken former grappling champion and teammate to UFC superstar Conor McGregor engaged in a wild brawl that broke out in the crowd during UFC 322 on Saturday, with Danis ultimately being tossed from the arena. The melee caught on camera saw Danis brawling with members of Khabib Nurmagomedov’s team including ex-UFC fighter Abubakar Nurmagomedov before police and security got control of the situation.
Danis was eventually detained
and removed from Madison Square Garden and UFC CEO Dana White promises that’s the last time he’ll ever be allowed to an attend an event.
“You will never see Dillon Danis at a UFC fight ever again,” White said at the UFC 322 post-fight press conference. “That [incident] and a lot of other reasons [are why we’d never sign him]. You’ll never see him at another fight.”
There’s no word on the spark that ignited the brawl, but considering the volatile past shared between McGregor and Nurmagomedov, it’s no surprise bad blood still exists with between their teams. Nurmagomedov famously leaped over the cage to go after Danis following Nurmagomedov’s submission win over McGregor back in 2018.
While Saturday’s incident was ugly, White admitted he probably deserved the lion’s share of the blame for not recognizing the potential disaster brewing after he was first alerted that Danis was attending the event.
“I blame myself for that actually,” White explained. “They came back and told me right before I walked out for the main card that Dillon Danis was here and he was moving around and sitting in fighters’ seats and not sitting in his own seat that he had a ticket. They said, ‘Do you want us to throw him out of here?’ I said, ‘He has a ticket?’ They said, ‘Yeah.’ They told me ‘[Jorge] Masvidal said he’s going to f*ck him up on sight.’ I said, ‘Where’s Masvidal sitting?‘ Well he’s six or seven rows away from Masvidal. I said well if the guy has a ticket, let him sit in his seat and let him do what he’s doing and keep an eye on him.
“It never even crossed my mind as stupid as this could be that the entire Muslim brotherhood was here tonight in the first five rows for Islam [Makhachev]. As soon as it broke out, I was over on the other side and I go ‘F*ck, I know exactly what that is.’ I knew it.”
After security and police got control of the situation, Danis was hauled out and detained. White later revealed the UFC opted not to press charges against him for the melee. Actually, White says the UFC didn’t pursue criminal action against anybody involved in the brawl, although he wasn’t sure if there was still an arrest made independent of the promotion.
“They called me from downstairs and they said, ‘We’ve got him down here, do you want to press charges and have him arrested?’” White said. “I said no, we don’t want to press charges. This is the fight business. You know how I feel about this shit. I could have prevented this tonight and I messed up.
“Not that I’m aware of, no [one was charged]. We’re not pressing charges. I’m not speaking for MSG or anybody else that was involved in this thing. But we, the UFC, are not pressing charges against anybody.”
Based on online records, Danis hasn’t been booked into any New York City jail but messages to the New York Police Department have not been returned at this time.
