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Dillon Danis wants to test himself in the UFC if he’s able to beat Logan Paul in the boxing ring.
Danis recently turned 30 and believes now is the time to find out if he can compete at the highest level, he said Monday on The MMA Hour.
“I’m willing to go and go out there and see if what I’m saying is true,” he said. “If I go to the UFC, give me your toughest fight. Give me Ian Garry, give me Neil Magny. Anybody. Leon Edwards. That would be the easiest fight. Colby [Covington], anybody.”
There are several obstacles to Danis’ goal, the most immediate being his six-round fight on Oct. 14 with Paul, who naturally outweighs him by at least 30 pounds and will cut to make the bout’s 195-pound limit.
Despite his size disadvantage, Danis predicted he would stop Paul.
“I think he quits on the stool, or they throw in the towel, or I knock him out, or a TKO,” he said. “Or I choke him unconscious.”
Another obstacles is the contract Danis signed six years ago with Bellator, which remains in effect. Danis claimed he had to pay the Paramount-owned promotion $100,000 to fight outside his deal against Logan; a Bellator official did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his contract status.
Bellator’s future remains uncertain amid persistent reports of an imminent sale to another promoter, possibly the tournament-based PFL, so it’s unclear how the contract could affect Danis’ future. He claimed he could be picked up by Misfits Boxing, the boxing promotion fronted by influencer turned fighter KSI and Mams Taylor; KSI co-headlines the Oct. 14 event opposite Tommy Fury.
According to Danis, one of the possibilities is a fight with Paul’s younger brother, longtime rival Jake Paul.
“[Misfits is] trying to sign me, if I beat him,” Danis claimed. “They’re actually in kahoots, who wants me, Jake [Paul] or KSI. But why am I doing that, boxing? I’m a jiu-jitsu guy. It’s so stupid. I want to go tap [UFC lightweight champion [Islam [Makhachev]. I want to go f****** beat these guys.”
Danis has spent quite a bit of time outside the octagon as the sometime training partner of former two-division UFC champ Conor McGregor. He infamously fought Makhachev’s training partner and coach, Khabib Nurmagomedov, after McGregor’s blockbuster loss to the then-lightweight champ at UFC 229.
Danis’ return to competition arrives four years after his most recent MMA fight, a first-round submission win at Bellator 222. After dual surgeries, he admitted his knees are not 100 percent, but they didn’t need to be for the Paul fight.
After relentlessly trolling Paul and his fiancee Nina Agdal on social media, Danis has a lot riding on the boxing match. But he wants the fight to be the start of bigger things in his fighting career – namely, a return to high-level MMA.
“I don’t get nervous,” he said. “The only thing that sucks, I just think boxing is so stupid. It’s just like a free fight. Guys can’t really fight. Fight me in a real fight. If me and him were in the street, I’m talking about his fiancé, it wouldn’t be boxing.”
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