Joe Rogan’s biggest problem with Dillon Danis’ professional debut had nothing to do with the fight.
As far as professional MMA debuts go, Dillon Danis’ was pretty much perfect.
Sure, he didn’t look great on the feet. Yes, he had to pull guard to play to get the finish. However, he did what he should have done – got the victory without taking much damage.
A flawless debut performance a la Garry Tonon is extremely rare. The vast majority of first trips to the cage are terrible. Some fighters have even gone on to reach the zenith of the sport after starting with a loss including the likes of Jacare, Renan Barao, Jon Fitch and Dan Hardy.
Even though Danis has a bigger name than a lot of debutants, his performance at Bellator 198 was as good as could be expected. It wasn’t that long ago when Aaron Pico and CM Punk were getting embarrassed in their high-profile debuts. (That’s the last time those two will be mentioned in the same sentence.)
Very ambitious call-out #Bellator198 https://t.co/fqWHyHq0AS
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) April 29, 2018
Mic drop
While his first-round submission of Kyle Walker was very impressive, his victory speech left a lot to be desired. His trash talk left a lot of folks cringing.
“I feel great. I said this before I came in, no one has ever experienced submissions like this in MMA. I’m too good. I said it, this is another level. Man, at the end of the day, I’m a samurai. I came here to die, so that motherfucker had to kill me. The leglock? That’s just jiu-jitsu. I gave you guys a free seminar on how to defeat MMA with jiu-jitsu.”
Joe Rogan, who was hosting a Fight Companion podcast for the event, had heard enough at this point.
“Ok, back to the drawing board. (laughs) That shit talking needs a little work.”
Jesus, tell us how you really feel https://t.co/JF3WLTLlLD
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) May 1, 2018
Brazillian jiu-jitsu black belt Eddie Bravo honed in on the seminar line, joking that he had to make sure to include that one. Brendan Schaub found humour in him announcing he was ready to die in the cage ‘because we haven’t heard that before.’
“Yeah, never heard that before. Come find me, bro. I’ll give you some tips. (laughs) We need to work on that shit talking,” Rogan agreed.
Check it out in the video embedded below from around the nine-minute mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaeObBIUPZw
