Dillon Danis Banned from UFC After Brawl with Islam Makhachev’s Teammates

Dillon Danis has been banned from the UFC. 

The 32-year-old MMA fighter, who was formerly a training partner of Conor McGregor, has been banned from all future UFC events after he was involved in a brawl at UFC 332 on Saturday, Nov. 15, CEO Dana White stated during a post-fight news conference. 

The brawl broke out in between championship fights at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, which saw Islam Makhachev defeat Della Maddalena for the welterweight championship, and Zhang Weili defeat Valentina Shevchenko to retain her women’s flyweight title.

Videos of the incident showed Danis involved in a physical altercation with members of UFC champion Makhachev’s team, including Abubakar Nurmagomedov and Magomed Zaynukov. Several security guards rushed to the scene to pull the fighters apart and walk Danis out of the arena. 

“I was on the other side [of the Octagon] and go, ‘F—, I know exactly what this is,’ ” White said of the incident, per ESPN, noting that he wouldn’t be pressing charges. “You will never see Dillon Danis at a UFC fight ever again.”

In 2018, McGregor, who had Danis in his corner, was involved in a rivalry with Khabib Nurmagomedov when McGregor made offensive comments about his family and religion. During a fight against the two in Las Vegas, Nurmagomedov had jumped out of the Octagon to attack his opponent’s corner. 

“He talked about my religion, he talked about my country, he talked about my father,” Nurmagomedov said of McGregor in a press conference at the time, per Sports Illustrated, noting that his opponent had also recently attacked a packed UFC bus prior to UFC 223. “He came to Brooklyn. He broke bus, he almost killed a couple of people. What about this s—?”

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Now, White admitted that he should’ve seen the altercation coming before the brawl got out of hand. 

“I blame myself for that actually,” he explained in the press conference. “They came back and told me right before I walked out for the main card that Dillon Danis was here and he was moving around and sitting in fighters’ seats and not sitting in his own seat that he had a ticket.”

“They said, ‘Do you want us to throw him out of here?’ I said, ‘He has a ticket?’ They said, ‘Yeah,’ ” the UFC CEO continued. “They told me ‘[Jorge] Masvidal said he’s going to f— him up on sight.’ I said, ‘Where’s Masvidal sitting?‘ Well he’s six or seven rows away from Masvidal. I said well if the guy has a ticket, let him sit in his seat and let him do what he’s doing and keep an eye on him.”