He’s Not A Real Athlete

Gordon Ryan recently shared his thoughts on Danis’ skill level during an interview with Ariel Helwani.

Their back-and-forth on social media has been ongoing for years, and Ryan has criticized Danis’ Jiu-Jitsu before.This time, however, the tension resurfaced after Danis was asked about a potential rematch with Ryan in a recent interview.

While initially entertaining the idea, Danis quickly changed the subject, which didn’t go unnoticed by Ryan:

You gotta give Dillon props. Dillon is a guy who makes things happen.He manages to stay in the public eye without really having any credentials or skills of any kind. Like, he’s never really won anything.

He won No-Gi Pans, he was decent at one point in Jiu-Jitsu.There was always a point where he was competing with the best guys, but he could never really beat the best guys.

His record at black belt is 18-16.

Reflecting on their ADCC 2017 match, Ryan acknowledged that Danis performed well at the time:

We actually had a relatively close match.It was when he was at or near his peak in Jiu-Jitsu, and I was just breaking onto the scene.

We had a match at ADCC 2017, which I won, and ever since then, we’ve kinda been going back and forth.

Despite their long history, Ryan was clear that he holds no personal animosity toward Danis, but he doesn’t consider him an active competitor:

I don’t have a problem with Dillon – more power to him.He makes things happen without actually doing anything. Like, he’s a master of getting himself into big matches and then pulling out.

He doesn’t do anything athletically, and he keeps getting these big matches and staying in the public eye.

So yeah, nothing against Dillon, he’s just not a real athlete.

When Helwani asked about the possibility of a rematch, Ryan shut it down completely:

No, there’s no way. Dillon hasn’t competed in Jiu-Jitsu in years.

He’s 18-16 as a black belt. He’s 1-3 at ADCC, which is our Olympics, the biggest and most prestigious tournament that we have.Dillon doesn’t really have any accomplishments in Jiu-Jitsu to even merit competing against me.

I would just do it because he’s a funny guy on Instagram who likes to talk s**t, and that’s it. But there’s no way he’ll ever compete against me now.He’s not even an athlete – he doesn’t even train anymore, he just posts online.