Matt Brown credits 'laughing stock' Dillon Danis for getting him interested in Logan Paul fight
26/09/2023 14:00
Dillon Danis spent far more time trolling on social media over the past few years than he has fighting, but it appears that experience is finally paying off.
Since booking a boxing match against Logan Paul for October, the Bellator veteran has spent weeks unleashing a barrage of posts aimed at his opponent's fiancée, model and social influencer Nina Agdal. The posts, which ranged from photos to videos to memes, got so out of hand that Agdal filed a lawsuit against Danis along with a restraining order.
The lawsuit alleges that Agdal suffered humiliation, emotional distress, and reputational harm from the constant bombardment of posts from Danis. Agdal also alleges that Danis broke Federal and state law by accessing a private video from her Snapchat account.
Danis will eventually have to answer to those claims in court — he was finally served paperwork for the lawsuit and no-showed a hearing this past week — but UFC welterweight Matt Brown gives Danis credit for getting him interested after previously having no desire to watch that fight.
"Dillon's dropping bombs," Brown said on The Fighter vs. The Writer. "I wouldn't expect anything else out of it. If she didn't put out those f****** videos and s***, he wouldn't have any material. But when you put yourself out there, that's what you get.
"You've got to love him for this whole thing. This has been the best internet troll trash talk media hype pump-up, pre-fight s*** that I've ever f****** seen. This guy has pulled out all the stops."
In the four-plus years since his last fight, Danis essentially made a profession out of trolling on social media, while also making promises about his eventual return to combat sports.
He then became an even bigger butt of the joke after he booked a boxing match against KSI in early 2023 only to drop out of the fight several weeks later. Danis faced much of the same initial criticism after signing up to face Paul in October, however he may have turned the tables in the public eye with his campaign aimed at both his opponent and his fiancée.
"It worked, because a year ago, we didn't give a f*** about Dillon Danis," Brown said. "We were so sick of hearing his name and we would have never brought it up on this podcast, but here we are talking about it now, because this dude f******* pulled out all the stops and now everybody is talking about it.
"I think I looked at his followers on Twitter. He's got close to a million followers now. He hasn't done anything except be the laughing stock of the jiu-jitsu and combat sports world and now all of a sudden he's got a million followers."
For all the attention that Danis has drawn to himself, he still has to set foot in the ring and face off with Paul in the boxing match on Oct. 14.
That's where Brown believes Danis' words may finally come back to bite him, but then again, perhaps his strategy will pay off if Paul gets overly emotional in the fight.
"That's the great thing about fighting," Brown said. "You can talk all this s***. You can have better cars, have more money, be more popular — it doesn't matter. When we step in there and fight, that's what matters. Who's going to win the f****** fight. Logan Paul's probably going to whoop his f****** ass, and ultimately he'll be the one standing when Dillon is on his ass.
"I think Dillon might give him a better fight that most people think, but ultimately Logan's probably going to f*** him up. That's the beautiful part of the world. This dude talks all that s*** and now you have the chance to go knock the motherf****** out for it."
Win or lose, Danis' antics have certainly drawn interest in the bout, and if he's getting a cut of pay-per-view sales, he may have just earned himself a few extra zeroes on his salary.
"I don't want to watch it but I'm going to watch it," Brown said. "I don't want to talk about it but we're sitting here talking about it. It's kind of fun. Dillon made this one kind of fun."
