Dillon Danis: ‘I’m In This To Be A World Champion, Not Just For Money’
“I think everyone is tuning in to watch me.”
These were the words Dillon Danis who spoke to MMAJunkie Radio this past week. Danis was of course speaking about his upcoming debut on Bellator 198 which will be headlined by Frank Mir facing Fedor Emelianenko and it appears he’s not lacking in confidence whatsoever.
Danis will open up the main card when he takes on Kyle Walker (2-4). Walker is currently riding a three fight losing streak, but does have a first round TKO on his record from a fight back in 2013 under the Shamrock FC banner. Danis might not be taking on world beaters yet, but he says he’s training with the mindset that he will one day be the best in the world and competing for world championships. One thing he says he’s definitely not doing is just turning up for a paycheck.
“When I saw wrestlers were doing that back in the day, I feel like they were getting into the sport for money and not to be the best,” Danis said. “I’m getting into this to be the world champion so I go into striking thinking if I’m going to be able to strike with the best in the world.
“You can’t go into this with the mindset of I’m just going to do enough not to get hit, you’re going in there with the wrong mindset. I go into very striking class thinking I’m going to be the world champion one day so I need to be able to strike with the best. You got to be able to do it all.”
Who will be in Danis’ corner on fight night has been a hot topic of conversation given he’s been cross training at multiple gyms. The multi-time BJJ world champion went on to reveal that SBG Ireland head coach John Kavanagh will be by his side for the fight taking place in Rosemont, Illinois.
“It will be John Kavanagh, Murilo Santana and one of my childhood training partners John Helwig, he’s 5-1n he’s fought and he’s a coach now in Jersey,” Danis said.
Speaking of Danis’ training, he’s come to learn that training MMA full time in New York is no easy task. Training in Ireland appears to have been a much more pleasant experience for the American who was training alongside the likes of Conor McGregor, Artem Lobov and Hakeem Dawodu during his last trip to Dublin.
“I was four or fives weeks in Ireland fully training at SBG and then I’ve been training in New York too,” Danis said. “In New York it’s kinda hard because there’s no kinda home and you have to go everywhere and go different places for everything. I’ll go do jiu-jitsu at my jiu-jitsu gym, Unity, then I’ll go do boxing at a boxing gym so it’s little bit more complicated.
“It’s a lot easier to train up in Ireland where you have everything under one roof and you have a coach there. So yeah, I’ve been training in Ireland then New York.”
