Dana White has just announced that Dillon Danis is banned from UFC events after being involved in yet another brawl at UFC 322. The incident occurred a little over 7 years after Khabib Nurmagomedov famously responded to Danis’ trash talk by leaping over the cage to attack him after submitting his training partner Conor McGregor in the main event of UFC 229. Interestingly, this latest incident was fairly similar in that Danis again clashed with the Dagestani contingent that were watching the fights. Although only limited footage exists, Danis can be seen taking several punches to the head and almost losing a shoe.
The brawl delayed the main card of UFC 322 as security worked hard to settle everyone down, and that’s just the start of the headaches it caused for the promotion. When White was asked about the incident after the event, he explained that he should have seen it coming:
“I blame myself for that actually. 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, sitting in fighter’s seats, and not sitting in his own seat that he had. He had a ticket and they said ‘do you want us to throw him out of here?’ and I said ‘he has a ticket?’ and they said ‘yeah…’ and you know they told me ‘(Jorge) Masvidal said he’s gonna f**k him up on sight.’ and I said ‘well where’s Masvidal sitting?’ and he said ‘he’s 6 or 7 rows 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.’”
Masvidal wasn’t the one who clashed with Danis in the end though, it was the supporters in attendance to watch Islam Makhachev face Jack Della Maddalena for the welterweight title. It’s not clear exactly what started the brawl between them and Dillon Danis at UFC 322 but they’re obviously not fans of his. It seems like White is holding Danis responsible for the incident:
“It never even crossed my mind, as stupid as this could be, that the entire Muslim brotherhood was here tonight in the first 5 rows for Islam (Makhachev) and as soon as it broke out, I was over on the other side and I go ‘f**k, I know exactly what that is.’ I knew it. Yeah, you will never see Dillon Danis at a UFC fight ever again.”
Although White doesn’t want to see Danis in attendance at a UFC event in the future, he isn’t taking it any further than that:
“So they call me from downstairs and they say ‘we got him down here, do you wanna press charges and have him arrested?’ and I said no. We don’t want to press charges, this is the fight business man. You know how I feel about this s**t, and I could have prevented this tonight and I messed up… We’re not pressing charges. I’m not speaking for MSG or anybody else who was involved in this thing, I don’t know, but we the UFC are not pressing charges.”
The footage of the brawl at UFC 322 that led to Dillon Danis being banned from future events was uploaded to the official Instagram account of Uncrowned:
