This article is part of our Craig Jones Invitational 2024 coverage. To get live results, play by play, and commentary, we’ll have a live updates article running all weekend.
Craig Jones has been busy disrupting the professional grappling world with the Craig Jones Invitational and although he’s been attracting competitors from ADCC 2024, he’s just revealed that he’s also extended a CJI invite to Dillon Danis as well. Jones actually took part in a lengthy interview with Ariel Helwani where he discussed most of the key points of his upcoming tournament, and Helwani was the one to bring up Danis originally. It was surprising enough that Helwani might put Danis forward as a potential competitor but even more surprising was the fact that Jones said he’d already thought of him.
Jones then actually got his phone out to read through the conversation he had with Danis, although he explained that he hadn’t had a firm answer yet:
“I messaged him, I emailed his manager, but I haven’t heard anything. Nothing… He messaged me something about it: ‘let me invest and we make it the Dillon Danis DDCC’… He wants in though I guess. I said ‘let’s have a call’ but no response.”
Although inviting Dillon Danis to CJI would probably be quite a controversial move given his status in the sport, Craig Jones had nothing but positive things to say about him:
“It’d be cool to have Dillon. He did do good at ADCC against Gordon (Ryan). At brown belt he was really, really good. First year of black belt really good and then he became really good at having a good time, which I respect as well.”
Jones isn’t wrong either, Danis has been far more active on social media than he has been in combat sports in recent years. Jones is still eager to add him to the Craig Jones Invitational competitor list though, and he’s open to the idea of putting him in a tournament bracket or giving him a superfight:
“Either or. If he wants to be in, he can be in. We’re not changing the name though!”
Although he jokes about a lot of things, it seems as though Jones might be serious about giving Danis the opportunity to compete for the million-dollar prize money. Dillon Danis obviously has plenty of other lucrative avenues outside of CJI though and Craig Jones even took a moment to reflect on the fact that professional grappling lost a high-level competitor:
“I think potentially we lose athletes like that because there’s probably more money being an influencer than there is in the tournaments. So it’s like for him having a good time being an influencer has probably paid significantly more than his grappling. And who knows… If a tournament like this had existed early in his career, he might not have felt the need to not compete. It’s crazy to think there’s potentially more money just not competing, doing other things.”
The full interview with Craig Jones where he reveals that he offered a spot at CJI to Dillon Danis was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of the MMA Fighting:
