Coffeezilla exposed Dillon Danis
Once upon a time, Dillon Danis was considered a Brazilian jiu-jitsu killer with a potentially bright future in mixed martial arts. Now he’s someone that can’t stop catching L’s, and it’s gone beyond the fight game. Earlier this week, YouTuber and investigative crypto journalist Coffeezilla released a video dedicated to Danis and his scams on Twitter. Unfortunately for Danis, Coffeezilla’s popularity exploded during his recent investigation into Logan Paul’s NFT scam. The timing couldn’t have been worse for Danis, as there are more eyes on Coffeezilla’s YouTube channel than ever.
If you’ve been following the crypto and NFT space as of late, you’re probably familiar with the scams and rug pulls that have been taking place. Influencers on Twitter promote NFTs to their audiences without knowing what they’re promoting, which in turn causes people to lose a lot of money. Coffeezilla’s team noticed that Danis promoted over 20 fake projects that were rug pulls on Twitter over the last year. They decided to set up Danis by seeing if he would accept money for another fake project, which he did. Dillon charged $5,000 to promote an NFT project on his Twitter for 24 hours. They sent Dillon a contract that explicitly mentioned that he would be the butt of a joke and that this was a fake project. Dillon didn’t read the agreement and didn’t have it reviewed by a lawyer. He signed off on the agreement and posted the tweet without any due diligence.
Since the video was posted four days ago, it’s already had 2.2 million views. You can imagine that most of these viewers are not combat sports fans. Danis being a fraud is no longer just a secret between fight fans. The world knows now.
Jorge Masvidal announces a major boxing event
Jorge Masvidal surprised a lot of people this past Monday when he announced he’s hosting a starstudded boxing event featuring some of the most prolific fighters in combat sports history on April 1. The event, titled Gamebred FC 4, will take place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and will be headlined by a fight between Anthony Pettis and Roy Jones Jr. Other matchups on the card include Jose Aldo vs. Jeremy Stephens, Vitor Belfort vs. Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza, and Paul Daley vs. Anthony Taylor. Aside from Jones Jr., these are all fighters that rose to prominence in the world of MMA but will be competing under boxing rules for this event. The event will be available for purchase through UFC Fight Pass.
Masvidal has hosted several combat sports events, including bareknuckle, pro boxing, and MMA fights. His event, iKON FC 3, in June of 2022, saw the professional MMA debut of Bo Nickal, who many predict will become a future UFC champion. April 1 will be a busy night as it marks the beginning of the 2023 PFL season and night one of Wrestlemania 39. This will also be a busy week for Masvidal, who’s scheduled to fight Gilbert Burns seven days later in his hometown of Miami, Florida, for UFC 287.
Tim Simpson splits from Paradigm Sports and starts his own management company
In last week’s edition of OverUnder, we discussed the trend of fighters leaving their managers to represent themselves in negotiations. Fighters like Dominick Cruz, Sean O’Malley, Colby Covington, and more have started to represent themselves because they feel they could get more value in business deals than what a manager could get them. A criticism of managers throughout combat sports history is that they add too many fighters to their roster, which limits the attention they can provide to each fighter. Earlier this week, Tim Simpson made a major statement when he announced that he left Paradigm Sports and has founded his own management company, Chosen Advisory Group.
Not only did Simpson leave Paradigm, he brought a lot of the Paradigm roster with him, including Israel Adesanya, Leon Edwards, Jiri Prochazka, Casey O’Neill, Jack Della Maddalena, Muhammad Mokaev, Jack Hermansson and Don Madge. In addition to migrating these fighters to his roster, he announced that he now represents Max Holloway. Simpson represents nine total fighters and wants his group to be small and focused. This is a boutique management group in MMA, which is something we haven’t seen before.
Quick Hits
- Deontay Wilder challenges Francis Ngannou to a boxing and MMA fight.
- Khamzat Chimaev and Robert Whittaker are down to fight each other at 185.
- Bellator averaged 1.068 million viewers for their CBS debut.
- Islam Makhachev plans to challenge for the welterweight title in the future.
- Dan Hooker is out of his fight against Jalin Turner with a broken hand.
- Tommy Fury failed to appear at a press conference with Jake Paul again.
- Jon Anik will call UFC 284 with Michael Bisping and Dominick Cruz.
- Kevin Lee re-signed with the UFC.
- “The Ultimate Fighter” season 31 will feature former UFC fighters and rising prospects.
- Chris Weidman is targeting a return to the UFC this summer.
- Sean O’Malley signed an eight-fight contract extension with the UFC.
- Anshul Jubli becomes the first Indian-born fighter in history to win a UFC fight.
Verdict is the mixed martial arts platform for fan engagement. Available on iOS and Android. Verdict’s mission is to increase engagement of the MMA viewing experience. Primarily, using innovative data collection methods that are shared with the community. We’re increasing transparency within the MMA community and its thoughts by aggregating crowd-sourced data and sharing it back. By leveraging a user focused design, we’re bringing fight data to the community’s finger tips.
