Mike Perry to Face Dillon Danis in MMA on August 29 Under a New Organization’s Banner

A trash-talking rivalry that has played out on social media for years is finally headed to a ring: Mike Perry and Dillon Danis will settle things in MMA on August 29 at the Kia Center in Orlando, Florida, according to matching reports from BJPenn.com, theScore, LowkickMMA, MMA Mania, and Cageside Press.

01Duel Arena, a new ring-based promotion

This fight will headline Duel Arena 1, the debut card of a new promotion backed by the online betting site DuelBet. The concept’s twist: every fight on the card, billed as a hybrid show mixing MMA, boxing, and kickboxing, will take place in a ring rather than a cage, an unusual setup for MMA. Several bouts involving social media personalities, along with former UFC fighters rounding out the card, are also expected to appear on the debut show, according to promoter Dean Toole, though no other fight had been officially confirmed at the time the Perry-Danis bout was announced.

02Perry riding high after Nate Diaz

For Mike Perry, this fight would mark his second MMA appearance this year, after dominating Nate Diaz by doctor stoppage in the second round this past May, on the Netflix card put on by Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano at Intuit Dome in Los Angeles. Perry opened with constant aggression that night, cutting his opponent open until Diaz’s corner called a halt to the fight.

Across from him, Dillon Danis carries an unbeaten 3-0 MMA record, mostly earned in Bellator between 2018 and 2019 by submission, though his fame owes more to his reputation as a top-level grappler, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt trained under Marcelo Garcia, and his many high-profile spats with figures in MMA and boxing. This fight will mark his return to actual MMA competition after several forays into boxing or exhibition formats.

03A fight negotiated, then scrapped, multiple times

This matchup has nearly happened several times before without ever coming together, fueled for years by social media back-and-forth between the two men. Perry had once negotiated an MMA fight with Danis before ultimately choosing to face Jake Paul in boxing instead, then floated new talks after KSI pulled out of a planned boxing match with Danis, before those talks again stalled over purse disputes. Perry had specifically said he felt the Misfits promotion’s MMA division was built to financially favor Danis, calling the proposed payday nowhere close to what he could earn in bare-knuckle. This time, under the banner of an entirely new organization and with a payday apparently seen as sufficient by both camps, the rivalry finally looks set to be settled in the cage, or rather, in the ring. After years of trash talk and failed negotiations looped endlessly on social media, this fight represents, for many MMA observers, the culmination of a rivalry that, through sheer number of false starts, has become nearly as talked about as the fights themselves.

It remains to be seen whether Duel Arena can make its ring-based concept stick in a landscape already crowded with alternative leagues backed by betting or streaming platforms. The success, or failure, of this debut show in Orlando could well determine whether the experiment continues beyond the Perry-Danis fight alone.

04FAQ