Dillon Danis was not exactly laying low after the melee which marred the UFC 229 main event on Saturday night.
Danis was the target of Khabib Nurmagomedov’s attack after ‘The Eagle’ successfully defended his lightweight title by submitting Conor McGregor in the fourth round of the biggest fight in UFC history.
Nurmagomedov jumped out of the Octagon to confront Danis, McGregor’s training partner and cornerman on the night, after the American taunted him from cageside.
The melee also saw McGregor assaulted by at least one member of Nurmagomedov’s team who rushed the Octagon after referee Herb Dean waved the fight off.
McGregor reportedly gave his own after-party a skip after the violent end to the event but Danis was not prepared to call it a night as the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt was spotted alone at a Las Vegas nightclub by UFC featherweight contender Brian Ortega.
“First I was like, ‘Damn, what are you doing here – especially alone?'” Ortega told TMZ after bumping into Danis . “I was like, ‘This guy is a savage here.'”
Bellator’s Danis was friendly with Ortega and commended him for representing BJJ at the elite level.
“He was respectful,” Ortega said. “He said, ‘Hey man, you’re holding it down for the Jiu Jitsu community. I admire you. I appreciate it.’
“He was cool about the whole situation.”
Danis has been training with McGregor ever since the Irishman’s submission defeat to Nate Diaz in March 2016 and has clearly soaked up some of McGregor’s trash-talking tendencies over the past two years.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bokpac5FxgX/?hl=en&taken-by=dillondanis
With plenty of Russian and Irish fans in Las Vegas for UFC 229, there was a danger of violence spilling into the casinos and nightclubs of the strip but Danis, who claimed that he suffered a concussion in the post-fight brawl, seemingly escaped any further injury as he partied into the wee hours.
“He wouldn’t really tell me much,” Ortega added. “He was just like, ‘Yeah, man, shit got crazy. These guys started throwing, I started throwing.’ One of his eyes was swollen. He was just like, ‘Yeah, man, I think they gave me a concussion,’ so he got down, too.”