This Saturday night Conor McGregor will square off in the octagon against his nemesis Nate Diaz at UFC 202. It's one of the biggest fights of the year and has major implications within the world of combat sports. 

If you're a jiu-jitsu fan, you may recognize a familiar face in The Notorious One's entourage as of late. Marcelo Garcia black belt Dillon Danis was brought into McGregor's camp when the rematch was originally announced back in June to help the Irishman prepare for his larger, more jiu-jitsu focused opponent.

The two first met at UFC 196 back in March 2016 that saw Diaz snap McGregor's 15 fight win streak and marks the first submission loss on Conor's record since 2010. Dillon Danis is there to make sure that doesn't happen again this weekend. But who is Dillon Danis and does he have the skills to improve the featherweight champions ground game?

Making His Mark

Danis burst onto the competition scene as a brown belt. With his submission based style and aggressive approach to every match he quickly became a crowd favorite. In 2014 the Marcelo Garcia prodigy swept just about every major tournament at brown belt, culminating in a World Championship gold medal.


Following his flawless campaign at brown belt, Marcelo Garcia awarded Danis his black belt on April 13th, 2015. From there Dillon became one of the most exciting young prospects at black belt.

Into The Fire

Dillon hit the ground running at black belt, winning a super fight against UFC fan favorite Joe Lauzon and losing a closely contested match with Garry Tonon at ADCC. From there Danis search for even bigger challenges and enrolled in one of the toughest tournaments in the sport of Jiu-Jitsu, Copa Podio.

After cutting close to 20lbs to make the lightweight limit, the young blackbelt put on one of the most impressive performances of his career. Fighting six matches in one night and coming up with a fourth place finish after he suffered a gruesome injury in the bronze medal match. Along the way he beat a number of tough black belts including Patrick Gaudio and Edwin Najmi.

MMA Experience

Dillon has been training BJJ since he was just 14 years old but what many don't know is that he has also been training striking, wrestling and MMA for quite some time as well. Growing up in New Jersey Dillon would often train with the infamous Miller brothers of the UFC. Jim Miller and Dan Miller helped the young BJJ star along with his training until he made the move full time to New York City to train with Marcelo Garcia.

Nowadays the BJJ phenom trains wrestling with Edge in Hoboken, NJ and also occasionally trains with UFC Strawweight Champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk.

There's Only One

Conor McGregor is a brown belt under John Kavanaugh and is no slouch on the mat. We saw him hit a slick x-guard sweep on Diaz in round one of their UFC 196 bout and show off some guard defense in his UFC 189 bout with Chad Mendes. So will Danis be able to elevate McGregor's game enough ahead of UFC 202? Dillon certainly seems confident:

If the fight goes to the ground, he'll dominate on the ground too.

Dillon Danis is one of the most exciting competitors in jiu-jitsu and coming from such a technical professor like Marcelo Garcia I'm confident he has much to teach the brown belt McGregor. Anything can happen in the UFC but should we see the fight go to the ground will their training be the difference?



What do you think? Will Dillon's help be enough for Conor on Saturday night?