Dillon Danis has his sights set on a big 2023 now that he’s fully recovered from a bad injury.
Once thought of as an elite jiu-jitsu prospect, Danis first made headlines in MMA as a training partner for Conor McGregor, before himself transitioning to MMA in 2019 and signing with Bellator. After his first two fights Danis was unable to be heard in the cage. “El Jefe,” however, explained that Danis’s serious injury prevented him from competing for more than three years.
“I suffered a serious knee injury.” Danis stated recently in The MMA Hour .
“I had the knee surgery at HSS [Hospital for Special Surgery], which is supposed to be the best. It ended up failing. My graft failed, completely failed. So I had to get another surgery, which is another year. So basically two surgeries within a year, they said it’s like being in two car accidents. So my knee was like completely f******. So I had the surgery that failed, they had to use a different graft, they did a whole thing, within a year. My knee was now f *****. But it’s not that I do not want to fight. This is the dumbest thing I have ever done. Why wouldn’t I want to fight?
” I’m still the exact same person. I’m still going to choke everybody out. It’s easy.”
Danis’s inability to return from a knee injury was not the reason he has been so absent for so many years.
According to the jiu-jitsu ace, after finally successfully rehabbing his knee, Danis was ready to box Logan Paul — until Paul’s stint with the WWE got in the way.
“I wanted to [return sooner],” Danis said. They asked me to prepare for my return and I replied, “OK, Logan? Then guarantee Jake? They wanted me to wait for [Logan]. He’s a scumbag, to be honest. He did not update me about the fight or tell me that he was wrestling. I felt like I had wasted so much time, thinking, “I’m going fight Logan.” He was just waiting for me to come back. He was the one thing that really pissed him off.”
A lightning rod for controversy, Danis instead turned to KSI after his plans to box Paul fell through, getting into an altercation with the YouTuber earlier this year which set up their scheduled boxing match on Jan. 14. The bout will be Danis’ first foray into boxing, and based on some recent sparring footage, some fans are questioning how he’ll fare inside the squared circle. But Danis suggests that all might not be as it seems heading into this fight.
“What they don’t realize, KSI runs that Misfits thing,” Danis said. “So they want me to spar and I’m like, no, f*** you guys. They would just give it straight to him. They want to record a bunch of sparring and s*** and I’m not stupid. I have not been filmed by them.
” I’m going after KSI very badly. No one realizes it.”
If Danis can back up his hefty talk, a big 2023 awaits him. Danis stated that he thinks matchups between Logan and Jake Paul can still be arranged if KSI is cleared. He also expressed interest in a Nate Diaz boxing match. And none of that includes his looming return to the Bellator cage.
“I’ll try to do four, maybe more [fights in 2023],” Danis said. Danis said, “When I return to MMA I will run them through fast and do two submissions. I have two more fights left with Bellator, so you never know what will happen.”
Source: https://www.mmafighting.com/2023/1/2/23521571/dillon-danis-details-knee-injury-that-has-kept-him-sidelined-targets-four-maybe-more-fights-in-2023?rand=96749
