The beef between Gordon Ryan and Dillon Danis has just reached a new chapter, as Ryan has now given his opinions on Danis’ skill level during a recent interview with Ariel Helwani. The two men have been going back and forth on social media for a very long time now, and this isn’t even the first time that Ryan has criticized Danis’ Jiu-Jitsu. He didn’t actually start the animosity this time at least, and it actually stemmed from a recent interview that Danis did with Helwani. He was asked about a potential rematch with Ryan and was apparently interested in it, but he quickly changed the subject.
Ryan noticed this and called him out for changing the subject on social media, and that meant that it was an important topic of conversation for Helwani. To his credit, Ryan was actually somewhat complimentary of Danis at first too:
“You gotta give Dillon props. Dillon is like a guy who makes things happen, like he manages to stay in the public eye not really having any credentials or skills of any kind. Like he’s never really won anything. He won no gi Pans, he was decent at one point in Jiu-Jitsu. There was always a point where he was competing with the best guys but he could never really beat the best guys. His record at black belt is 18-16.”
Ryan then spoke about his first match with Danis back at ADCC 2017, and he was pretty complimentary about Danis’ performance then too:
“We actually had a relatively close match. It was when he was at (or) near his peak in Jiu-Jitsu and I was kinda just breaking on to the scene. We had a match at ADCC 2017 which I won, and ever since then we’ve kinda been going back and forth.”
Gordon Ryan was very clear that he doesn’t have any personal issue with Dillon Danis throughout the interview, but he doesn’t think of him as an actual athlete either:
“I don’t have a problem with Dillon, more power to him. He makes things happen without actually doing anything. Like he’s a master of getting himself into big matches and then pulling out or just not… like he doesn’t do anything athletically and he keeps getting these big matches and keeps staying in the public eye. So yeah nothing against Dillon, he’s just not a real athlete.”
That’s when Helwani asked Ryan directly about the possibility of a rematch with Danis, and Ryan shut it down immediately:
“No, there’s no way. Dillon hasn’t competed in Jiu-Jitsu in years. He’s 18-16 as a black belt, 18 wins 16 losses. He’s 1-3 at ADCC, so ADCC is where we competed, it’s our Olympics, the biggest and most prestigious tournament that we have. Dillon’s record there is 1-3. Dillon doesn’t really have any accomplishments in Jiu-Jitsu, number 1 to even merit competing against me. I would just do it just because he’s like a funny guy on Instagram who likes to talk s**t and that’s it, it’s just like a fun thing for me to do. But there’s no way that he’ll ever compete against me now. He’s not even an athlete, he doesn’t even train any more, he just posts online.”
The full interview with Gordon Ryan where he shares his thoughts on Dillon Danis was uploaded to his official YouTube channel:
