Dillon Danis Is About to Get Fed to a Wolf
Combat sports has finally answered a question nobody asked but everybody secretly wanted: what happens if you take the internet's most punchable man and put him in a wrestling match against Khamzat "Borz" Chimaev, a man whose nickname is literally the Chechen word for wolf?
On June 13, 2026, at Chaifetz Arena in St. Louis, RAF 10 is going to give us exactly that: Chimaev vs. Danis as the catchweight wrestling main event. And let me be clear about what this is: it is not a competition. It is a public service.
A quick note on the matchup, for the betting men
Let's not insult anyone. Dillon Danis can actually grapple. He's a legitimate BJJ black belt out of the Marcelo Garcia lineage, which is more than the average loudmouth with a verified checkmark can say. In a jiu-jitsu match with friends, on the mats, points on the board, he's dangerous.
This is not that.
This is wrestling, against a man who out-wrestles UFC champions for fun. Chimaev doesn't take you down so much as relocate you, against your will, to a worse place, and then live there rent-free on top of your ribcage until the referee feels bad for you. He has spent his entire career making elite, world-ranked professionals look like they forgot every scrap of defensive wrestling they ever learned. Danis's MMA résumé, by comparison, is two Bellator fights from the Obama-ish era and one boxing match against Logan Paul that he lost by disqualification, for trying to grab a guillotine. In a boxing match.
And yes, I know what you're going to say. Chimaev looked slow at UFC 328. He looked tired. He looked beatable, and he just lost to Sean Strickland. I'm not fooled by it. A flat night against a top-five middleweight tells you nothing about what he does to a grappler stepping up out of his weight class and his sport. When Danis steps onto the mat across from him, I fully expect the same Borz who's been relocating world-class wrestlers for years, every bit as deadly as ever.
So yes. Bet accordingly. Or don't bet at all, because the only honest line is "how long until the towel."
Why is this happening?
Officially? It's a sporting event. Realistically? It's catharsis with a ticket price.
Danis has spent years building a personal brand out of being insufferable on the internet: the trash talk, the deleted tweets, the feuds with people's families. He turned trolling into a job, and the bill for that job is now due, and it's being collected by the scariest grappler alive.
This is fan service, plain and simple. Promoters know it. We know it. There are a lot of people out there who have never watched a wrestling match in their lives but would happily set an alarm to watch Dillon Danis get folded like a lawn chair. RAF looked at that demand and, in a moment of beautiful clarity, decided to supply it.
The honest part
Could it be a squash? Almost certainly. Is a one-sided beatdown "good" competition? No. Is it going to be one of the most-watched things in the sport that week regardless? Also yes, and pretending otherwise would be lying to you.
The most realistic version of this is Danis doing nothing of note and lasting only as long as Chimaev feels like dragging it out. There's a slightly more entertaining chance he tries to talk during the match. There is a zero percent chance he wins.
The rest of the card is no joke
Here's the booking that actually got us emotional: Arman Tsarukyan vs. Tony Ferguson on the mat. And you have to understand how beloved this man is. Tony Ferguson isn't just a former champion, he's a folk hero. A 12-fight win streak that should have gotten him a title and never quite did, the cursed five-times-booked Khabib fight that the universe refused to let happen, the elbows, the imanari rolls, the wobbling-forward-throwing-bombs chaos, the "El Cucuy" boogeyman mystique, and the genuine, slightly-unhinged weirdo charisma that made him impossible not to root for. Tony fought like a man who'd made peace with pain a long time ago, and fans loved him for it. He's one of those rare fighters where casuals and hardcores agree completely: everybody wants Tony to be okay.
Now, let's be honest about where he is. The guy who built one of the greatest win streaks in lightweight history is long gone. He's old, he's been physically broken for years, and the back half of his MMA run was hard to watch precisely because every fight meant more damage piled onto a body that had already given everything. Watching Tony Ferguson fight had stopped being fun and started being a thing you did with one hand over your eyes.
That's exactly why this is great. There's no striking here. Nobody is putting Tony's chin through another bad night. It's wrestling. For the first time in a while we get to just enjoy Tony Ferguson, the scrambles, the weird angles, the refusal to ever stop moving, without the dread. He's back, he's competing, and for the first time in a long time you can watch El Cucuy and not worry about him. That's a gift.
And the booking we'd actually circle for competitive reasons: Lance Palmer vs. Aaron Pico at lightweight. Pico is the kind of athlete this format was built for, a freakishly explosive wrestler with real crossover name value, and Palmer is a multi-time PFL champion and a savvy, decorated grappler in his own right. No gimmick, no narrative, just two high-level guys who can genuinely beat each other. The rest of the card is stacked with serious wrestlers too. There are world champions and Olympic medalists up and down the lineup, the kind of athletes who came to actually compete, not to play a part.
Back to the main event
But make no mistake about why you're tuning in. The undercard is the heart, the main event is the spectacle, and the spectacle is a man named after a wolf being handed the internet's most punchable troll as a snack. Everything else on this card is a bonus. The headline is Khamzat Chimaev doing what Khamzat Chimaev does, and Dillon Danis finally collecting a bill he's been running up for years.
How to watch
The event goes down Friday, June 13, 2026 at 8 PM ET at Chaifetz Arena in St. Louis, streaming live on FOX Nation in the US. Everywhere outside the US, it's broadcasting free on the RAF YouTube channel. Set a reminder. Bring snacks. This is the rare card where the most likely outcome and the most deserved outcome are the same thing.
The wolf is hungry. Dinner is served.