Dillon Danis shares a Bellator fight card with former UFC heavyweight champion Frank Mir on Saturday, but little did Mir realize they also shared a bit of history with each other.
“Maybe once or twice I was in the same room as (Mir) at (mixed martial arts and Brazilian jiu-jitsu great Robert) Drysdale’s,” Danis said. “I was young, like 15, 16. And (Drysdale) was like, ‘I don’t think you want to go at Frank. He’s a little bit too big for you.'”
Mir still is big, not only enormous physically, but also in name recognition. Danis, too, is well-known — infamous, some would say — for being Conor McGregor’s training partner and a member of his inner circle.
Both fighters make their Bellator debuts Saturday (8 p.m., Paramount Network) at Allstate Arena. In fact, Danis’ 175-pound catchweight draw against Kyle Walker (2-4) marks his MMA debut. Mir headlines against Fedor Emelianenko in a first-round Heavyweight World Grand Prix bout.
Mir and Danis sat down for an interview at Tribune Tower to talk about their opponents, their fighting styles, McGregor’s legal troubles and more.
On what led them to Bellator
Mir: “I fight for the reason I’ve always fought for: I like to compete. … I was suspended for two years and I got really fat. That was a polite way of putting it. I’ve calmed back down in the last four months. … Everybody around me really helped me get my weight back down. I was north of 300 pounds on Jan. 2, and now I’m around 260.”
Danis: “I would say to prove myself. A lot of people think jiu-jitsu (fighters) can’t fight MMA, so I want to represent the art in a way.”
On fighters with jiu-jitsu and grappling backgrounds not getting respect in MMA
Mir: “It’s not that submissions don’t work anymore, it’s that submission artists don’t want to fight because it’s a pay cut. And so they stick to seminars, they’ll do grappling expos, super fights now with ACB Jiu Jitsu — they pay good money. … (Eddie Bravo Invitational), you can go make (20) grand if you win the tournament. (Twenty) thousand dollars and you don’t get punched in the face.”
Danis: “Nowadays in MMA you’d be stupid to go in as a one-trick pony. You have to train in everything. That’s where a lot of jiu-jitsu guys fail. They want to learn enough striking to not get hit.”
On being polarizing figures among MMA’s fan base
Danis: “Whoever likes you will like you; whoever doesn’t, it doesn’t really matter to me. … I don’t care who likes me or doesn’t.”
Mir: “There’s guys that wish they were you, so they hate you for being you. And if you add the fact that you’re well-spoken and good-looking … man, I got a lot of people that don’t like me.”
Danis: “I think the problem would be if no one actually cared.”
Mir: “You’re 100 percent right. Indifference is what death is for us as fighters.”
Danis: “The culture is very different in jiu-jitsu. They bow and they never show their personalities. It’s a very, I don’t want to say ‘fake,’ but it’s a very different kind of community. So when I came out and I started being myself, everybody was like, ‘Oh, my God, what’s happening? I hate this kid.”
On whether McGregor’s association with Danis helps or hurts his image
Danis: “I think it helps with my profile. … Me and him are very close and we talk about this kind of stuff, the mental side and everything.”
Mir: “It’s not like Conor doesn’t have other sparring partners; how come we’re not talking about them? So that takes already a certain kind of marketing that’s actually extremely intelligent. He’s going to get paid more for his debut than somebody else that nobody knows who the hell they are. Who else gets to make their debut in Bellator? That’s an impressive accomplishment.”
On McGregor’s criminal case stemming from charges he and his entourage attacked a bus carrying UFC fighters in New York this month
Mir: “My disappointment … I come from the old era where people thought that we were some kind of savages that got broken out of prison and thrown into a cage. … So it was a big stigma. So that’s the only part I’m a little upset about. It’s like, ‘Now we’re back to that again?’
“His emotions got over. He went from a guy who’s a trained professional fighter, he went back to that (expletive) kid that’s in Ireland, ‘You disrespected me,’ and now all of a sudden he went back to that guy. He’s got to realize he’s a millionaire. People are going sue the (expletive) out of you.”
Danis: “I can’t talk about any of that — it’s still under investigation — but it didn’t put any damper on me. … I don’t find it a distraction at all. He’ll deal with it. He’ll get past it and then go back to his championship-level fighting.”
On their opponents
Mir: “His game plan is to try to land the home-run shot. As far as boxing, he can’t outbox me, I’m a better pure boxer. Pure wrestling, I’m a better wrestler. Jiu-jitsu … we’re not even in the same league. I’m bigger, stronger and I’m the better athlete, and I’m a few years younger. … He has a lot of mystique around him. He’s Russian, he doesn’t talk a lot. There’s a little bit of mysticism behind him. But I’m a realist. I see good and bad. I see a guy who struggled with (Chicago native) Brett Rogers because he doesn’t know how to fight in a cage properly. Right now you could’ve got me in January when I was 300 pounds and I’m not going to struggle with Brett Rogers. But I also see a good athlete who has a lot of heart.”
Danis: “There is no opponent. It will be the ‘Dillon Danis Show,’ that’s what I feel. I don’t feel like he’s going to bring anything to the table. I will go out there and I will dominate him.”
On Danis jumping to Bellator with no amateur MMA experience
Danis: “I honestly believe in myself 100 percent and I believe I’m the best in the world. I don’t have to do amateur.”
Mir: “That’d be the equivalent of asking a baseball guy, ‘Hey, are you going to finish your college career, or are you going to go ahead and sign up for the pros and go ahead and make a $20 million contract guaranteed?'”
On Mir’s Laugh Factory appearance Thursday night in Lake View
Mir: “Come see me and (Bellator heavyweight) Chael (Sonnen) get up on stage together, one of the few meetings we’ll have where it’s a friendly one. I’m going to do a little standup, talk, hang out. … (Mir segued into a routine about fighters getting fined for not making weight.) If I came home and told my wife I was getting fined 20 percent, I’d be showing up with a black eye to the fight. They’d be like, ‘What happened?'”
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