Dillon Danis was recently asked about a potential rematch with Gordon Ryan and surprisingly, he was actually pretty open to the idea. Not only has he not competed in combat sports very often in recent years but he hasn’t had any grappling matches at all since 2017. In fact, his last appearance in Jiu-Jitsu was at ADCC 2017 and that was also the event that he faced Ryan in. His last matches came in the absolute division where he went 1-1 but on the first day he competed at under 88kg, where he came up against Ryan in the opening round. Danis gave Ryan one of his toughest matches of the weekend but he still lost a decision, while Ryan went on to win gold at that weight and silver in the absolute.
Although that was the last time they competed against one another, the two men have shared plenty of words on social media since then. There’s very clearly no love lost between them and now that Dillon Danis is attempting to compete in various combat sports more often, Ariel Helwani questioned him about a rematch with Gordon Ryan:
“Yeah 100%, if they pay. We’ve gotten big money but that would have to be a big money one.”
Helwani briefly mentioned the Craig Jones Invitational too and knowing that the promotion are currently looking to book superfights for their second event, it doesn’t seem too crazy. Craig Jones even approached Danis about competing in the first edition, but it never came to fruition. Although Danis might be open to the idea and CJI would have the money to pay them both handsomely, Ryan has already rejected the idea of competing at CJI 2. There are other promotions that would have the ability to put this match together of course, but Danis doesn’t have a good relationship with one of the other major players:
“When I go to the UFC events they got these Jiu-Jitsu guys on the screen like and stuff like that and like they made me pay for tickets when I’m the one that brought jiu-jitsu up when no one was talking s**t.”
The full interview with Dillon Danis where he is asked about the possibility of a rematch with Gordon Ryan was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of The Ariel Helwani Show:
