Dillon Danis on MMA debut: ‘When you’re this good, you don’t feel pressure’

Marcelo Garcia black belt and Conor McGregor’s teammate Dillon Danis has been under the MMA spotlight, but seemingly for the wrong reasons. The 25-year-old Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu world champion has exuded the same bravado as “The Notorious”, whom he has been working with since the training camp for the Nate Diaz rematch in August 2016.

Danis is now preparing for his MMA debut at Bellator 198 against Kyle Walker (2-4). And so far, he has been nothing but confident coming into this transition into an entirely different form of competition.

“If there wasn’t a bull’s eye on my back and there wasn’t questions, who would really care about the fight,” Danis said on Monday’s episode of The MMA Hour (via MMA Fighting). “There’s a lot of guys in this game that have been in it for years — they’re like journeymen or something — and no one really cares about them.”

“So, at the end of the day, questions, bull’s eyes, people talking shit, it’s all good. You could put as much pressure on me as you want. But when you’re this good, you don’t feel pressure.”

Danis apparently feels that fans do not think he is taking his MMA move too seriously. For this, he also offered a response.

“It’s that people would think I would do this not prepared,” Danis said. “They think that I would take this as a joke. And I know MMA is a ruthless game and you can get hurt. You could basically change your life with a wrong fight or something.”

“I feel disrespected that people would think that I’m just going into this lightly or I’m just gonna train jiu-jitsu or something like that,” he continued. “I respect this game a lot and I’m preparing for a world title fight, in a sense. Because that’s how every fight should be treated. I just feel a little disrespected that people would think that I took this lightly.”

Bellator 198 takes place on April 28^th at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Illinois. It will be headlined by a heavyweight matchup between Fedor Emelianenko and Frank Mir.