Dillon Danis speaks about his suspension from MG academy

[Dogstarman]

https://www.jiujitsutimes.com/dillon-danis-love-marcelo-needs-get-stuff-together/

I love Marcelo, to death” Danis told Helwani. “I would never say anything bad about him.

Then proceed to talk shit and give vague references that Marcelo doesn't have his shit together.

I know Marcelo is human and has problems like the rest of us but this Danis guy is something else.

 

[The Half Blood Prince]

This Danis guy is funny asf
It so strange and funny to see a black belt acting like this.

Thing is though, his out of the normal and is a wild loose guy which makes him entertaining because he stands out from the crowd due to his wild nature which people prefer rather than the normal humble quiet guy

 

[closequarters]

This interview actually makes Danis seem kind of likeable, or at least you can understand his moves aren't that crazy. Just kind of cringy.

Also, imo, there's a big difference in "Marcelo needs to get his stuff together" and what Danis actually said "Marcelo needs to get his stuff straight". It seemed like Danis meant it as Marcelo gave a very one-sided view of Danis and Danis wanted Marcelo to give the story (not life) straight. Danis was very respectful and just spoke like a confident fighter. He was also humble at moments and complimentary of guys.

 

[mataleaos]

I listened to it and I didn't hear anything bad about Marcelo at all.

Danis comes off like a tool but in the interview he kept saying that Marcelo is a father figure to him and that the situation broke his heart, and that he dreams that he;'ll have a big match one day and Marcelo will show up and corner him again.

All he said is that Marcelo has a super strict way that he wants all of his top students to act like, and that their personalities didn't match that well as time went on. But he was very respectful of Marcelo and didn't trash him at all.

Marcelo is my favorite of all time so I'm defensive of Marcelo, but I think this interview had one or two sentences taken out of context and posted up as click bait.

 

[Significance Deficit]

Marcelo is great and I can't stand Dillon, but there's something to what he's saying here. I don't understand why some professors feel entitled to try to control and judge things that happen off the mat. It's not their business. Unless their school is being directly affected by the actions of one of their guys, they should stay out of it.

If Marcelo actually held him back from getting his black belt for 6 months longer because he posted a picture on social media of him giving the finger, then that's some ridiculous shit.

 

[Daniel Fox]

Bottom line is it is Marcelo's school, if Marcelo feels that conducting yourself like a jackass makes the school look bad, than that is his business. Danis could either clean up his act or leave the school. I have no sympathy for Danis. To actually feel like he has been screwed over is laughable.

 

[Zefram Cochrane]

Marcelo is great and I can't stand Dillon, but there's something to what he's saying here. I don't understand why some professors feel entitled to try to control and judge things that happen off the mat. It's not their business. Unless their school is being directly affected by the actions of one of their guys, they should stay out of it.

If Marcelo actually held him back from getting his black belt for 6 months longer because he posted a picture on social media of him giving the finger, then that's some ridiculous shit.

He who owns the school makes the rules. It's not an unheard concept in martial arts that students, especially advanced ones, represent their school and are expected to behave according to the principles set by their head instructor.

I mean, if someone doesn't like it they can always find another school with more relaxed views.

 

[TheMood]

I think it is fine for an instructor to not want a student to reflect poorly on him. If things were done in private I am sure there would not be an issue. Danis is known because he is Marcelo's student. This is what made him a public figure in the bjj community. I think it is a good thing that Marcelo cares about his image and that of the school.

I can be fired if I did something that reflected poorly on my employer and I think this is something similar.

 

[ens189]

Marcelo is great and I can't stand Dillon, but there's something to what he's saying here. I don't understand why some professors feel entitled to try to control and judge things that happen off the mat. It's not their business. Unless their school is being directly affected by the actions of one of their guys, they should stay out of it.

If Marcelo actually held him back from getting his black belt for 6 months longer because he posted a picture on social media of him giving the finger, then that's some ridiculous shit.

Hey man, did we ever wrestle against each other in high school?

 

[Balto]

I don't understand why some professors feel entitled to try to control and judge things that happen off the mat. It's not their business. Unless their school is being directly affected by the actions of one of their guys, they should stay out of it.

It quite literally is their business.

Every school is directly affected by the actions of all of the people training there. That is what people mean when they talk about "training environment" and "vibe" when looking for schools. It is a huge factor in a gym's success or failure.

Off the mat stuff contributes to this massively. Even more than on the mat stuff in my experience.

Take two situations:
1) Student A likes Student B personally off the mat, but just doesn't like to roll with him on the mat.
2) Student A has major drama with Student B personally off the mat, but they train together fine.

Give me Situation 1 every time. That's easy to solve: "Just roll with other people." Simple. Done. Both will be happy and contribute to a positive training environment.

Situation 2 is a tinder box. It will poison the training environment subtly until it comes to a head. When it inevitably goes off, you're not only losing Student A and Student B, but probably half a dozen other guys associated with them on both sides as well.

On forums everyone acts like gyms should be run by pure logic and reason. This ignores the fact that BJJ is made up people, and BJJ people are incredibly irrational in the real world. In fact most of the time the ones that claim to be the most rational are the worst with this stuff.

As long as BJJ is made up of people, there will be politics, off the mat stuff, behavior issues, etc. This is all 100% an instructor's business -- literally. It has a direct effect on the bottom line.

Think guys in the NFL ever get fired for "off the field" stuff? It's a fact that they do. When there's millions of dollars on the line, you can't mess around with a guy pissing off everyone else on the team.

 

[the heed]

It quite literally is their business.

Every school is directly affected by the actions of all of the people training there. That is what people mean when they talk about "training environment" and "vibe" when looking for schools. It is a huge factor in a gym's success or failure.

Off the mat stuff contributes to this massively. Even more than on the mat stuff in my experience.

Take two situations:
1) Student A likes Student B personally off the mat, but just doesn't like to roll with him on the mat.
2) Student A has major drama with Student B personally off the mat, but they train together fine.

Give me Situation 1 every time. That's easy to solve: "Just roll with other people." Simple. Done. Both will be happy and contribute to a positive training environment.

Situation 2 is a tinder box. It will poison the training environment subtly until it comes to a head. When it inevitably goes off, you're not only losing Student A and Student B, but probably half a dozen other guys associated with them on both sides as well.

On forums everyone acts like gyms should be run by pure logic and reason. This ignores the fact that BJJ is made up people, and BJJ people are incredibly irrational in the real world. In fact most of the time the ones that claim to be the most rational are the worst with this stuff.

As long as BJJ is made up of people, there will be politics, off the mat stuff, behavior issues, etc. This is all 100% an instructor's business -- literally. It has a direct effect on the bottom line.

Think guys in the NFL ever get fired for "off the field" stuff? It's a fact that they do. When there's millions of dollars on the line, you can't mess around with a guy pissing off everyone else on the team.

/thread

 

[Balto]

I mean I get the sentiment above. Nobody wants a control freak instructor. There are some of those out there too. Maybe too many.

At the end of the day though, this is a team activity. I laugh when people say it's not. You need your teammates more than you need your instructor. You need training partners to get anywhere in this stuff.

In my time I've seen plenty of guys try to be above being part of a team. After a decade I can see where they've all gone, which is basically nowhere. Almost all of them quit long ago anyway. The few still around are still bouncing from gym to gym, still wondering why "everyone else" is so crazy. They can't see that they're the crazy ones that no one wants to train with.

 

[Quebec Nick]

Give me Situation 1 every time. That's easy to solve: "Just roll with other people." Simple. Done. Both will be happy and contribute to a positive training environment.

Situation 2 is a tinder box. It will poison the training environment subtly until it comes to a head. When it inevitably goes off, you're not only losing Student A and Student B, but probably half a dozen other guys associated with them on both sides as well.


Think guys in the NFL ever get fired for "off the field" stuff? It's a fact that they do. When there's millions of dollars on the line, you can't mess around with a guy pissing off everyone else on the team.

If you believe Dillon, he's neither in situation 1 or 2. He's not having problems with his training partners, he's not being a dick to them on social media, he's not disrespecting any other students or his coach. He's being a dick on social media to the world in general, to future opponents in MMA and in grappling and he's showboating.


It's a game, high level grappling matches and mma fights need these build ups, fighters need to get involved in all those bad mouthing matches and twitter wars.

I'm pretty sure that all the coaches cringe a little when they ear their students trashtalking, most of them are from traditionnal martial arts where respect is very important. But as a coach you need to understand that it's all part of the game.

It's true that your brand is affiliated to this but if the guy stays respectful in the gym and he's just being a dick to promote fights or to create grudges you need to let go a little.

At my kickboxing gym's association, we have some MMA fighters competing in TKO, even if it's local, there's trashtalking going on, twitter wars, and some pushing and shoving at the weight ins, it's all to promote the fights. Our association is based on kung fu, so we bow, we call the instructor Sifu, there's nothing but utter respect in the gym, no showboating, everybody is helping each other... But the sifu don't threaten to kickout people and suspending people because they trashtalk to promote a fight.

 

[Balto]

If you believe Dillon, he's neither in situation 1 or 2.

I don't believe that though.

It's best to keep in mind that quite a bit of the public statements/interviews/FB posts in BJJ are half truths at best if not outright bullshit. The original video about the suspension was clearly missing tons of stuff and carefully worded for public consumption as well.

I don't claim to know the details here, and I would say that they aren't my business in this case. I've heard my share of grumblings about all of the problems from people who train there, but they're pretty vague.

It's just a little too much for me to believe that all of this happened over a couple of social media posts.

 

[lechien]

If you believe Dillon, he's neither in situation 1 or 2. He's not having problems with his training partners, he's not being a dick to them on social media, he's not disrespecting any other students or his coach. He's being a dick on social media to the world in general, to future opponents in MMA and in grappling and he's showboating.


It's a game, high level grappling matches and mma fights need these build ups, fighters need to get involved in all those bad mouthing matches and twitter wars.

I'm pretty sure that all the coaches cringe a little when they ear their students trashtalking, most of them are from traditionnal martial arts where respect is very important. But as a coach you need to understand that it's all part of the game.

It's true that your brand is affiliated to this but if the guy stays respectful in the gym and he's just being a dick to promote fights or to create grudges you need to let go a little.

At my kickboxing gym's association, we have some MMA fighters competing in TKO, even if it's local, there's trashtalking going on, twitter wars, and some pushing and shoving at the weight ins, it's all to promote the fights. Our association is based on kung fu, so we bow, we call the instructor Sifu, there's nothing but utter respect in the gym, no showboating, everybody is helping each other... But the sifu don't threaten to kickout people and suspending people because they trashtalk to promote a fight.

Lol.

Marcelo became on the top dog at Bjj by winning competition.

Hence, why dillion went to train with him.

You don't need to go in Instagram to compete in Bjj.

Marcelo did fine without Instagram

 

[Quebec Nick]

Lol.

Marcelo became on the top dog at Bjj by winning competition.

Hence, why dillion went to train with him.

You don't need to go in Instagram to compete in Bjj.

Marcelo did fine without Instagram

You do understand that guys like Danis, Tonon, Cummins... are trying to become professionnal grapplers. Where they get paid good money for their fights. They don't want to follow the old guys route of winning tournaments, teach classes, open your own school and doing seminars.

 

[Daniel Fox]

You do understand that guys like Danis, Tonon, Cummins... are trying to become professionnal grapplers. Where they get paid good money for their fights. They don't want to follow the old guys route of winning tournaments, teach classes, open your own school and doing seminars.

There is very little money in Grappling events, and there will probably never be any because outside of grapplers no one is really interested in it. Regardless, out of respect to his instructor he should have either acted accordingly to the way Marcelo wanted him to act or left the school. This really is not unreasonable, most jobs do not want their employees to display unbecoming behavior that will bring shame on their agency or company.

 

[mattemate]

He came off OK to me. A difference in philosophies mainly. I like the kid.

Then proceed to talk shit and give vague references that Marcelo doesn't have his shit together.

He honestly seemed pretty sad over the whole thing.

If Marcelo actually held him back from getting his black belt for 6 months longer because he posted a picture on social media of him giving the finger, then that's some ridiculous shit.

Yeah kind of reeks of TMA stuff more than actual ability.

On forums everyone acts like gyms should be run by pure logic and reason. This ignores the fact that BJJ is made up people, and BJJ people are incredibly irrational in the real world. In fact most of the time the ones that claim to be the most rational are the worst with this stuff.

There's a SJW type in my gym who threw a hissy fit the other day just because a guy was beating him basically. He gets all bitchy on social media all the time too, about everything. Blocked me from fb for calling him a white knight. Lol, because he acts all cool in person. Anyway he has a history of throwing hissy fits and storming off and my coach is ready to boot him if he does it again. I mention this because he thinks he's so rational. Dude is an engineer and own a software company but loses his shit all the time instead of working to improve.

 

[Crotalis]

Yeah kind of reeks of TMA stuff more than actual ability.

I see where you're coming from with that, but provided everyone knows the expectations ahead of time, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. While I don't necessarily think throwing the finger is the worst thing ever, I've been in schools where the advanced students think they're gods gift to just about everything and are complete asses (and outright dangerous and bad people in some cases), and they still continued to get promoted and you could see those attitudes slowly start to permeate the entire academy and basically ruin the atmosphere.

I'm willing to bet that while the middle finger was the straw that "broke the camel's back", that it was not the only reason Danis got held back (if he did indeed get held back).

 

[biscuitsbrah]

Bottom line is his school, his rules. Simply find a school that is in line with your mentality.