Ariel Helwani Viciously Roasts Dillon Danis For Social Media Postings

Benny A. King

Ariel Helwani has turned over a new leaf in 2021. Highroad Helwani is no more. He is replaced with this new Helwani who isn’t afraid to confront anyone. We first wrote about this transformation during his documented beef with Brendan Schaub. But now Ariel is going one step further. It all started with the latest round of Jake Paul vs Dana White ping pong.

Paul had heard about Dana White’s doping challenge and made a counter offer. Here’s how it goes:

“Happy new year Dana White, Here is a real challenge for you…

I will immediately retire from boxing and fight Jorge Masvidal in the UFC if you agree to:

  1. Increase min fighter pay per fight to $50k (it’s $12k now)
  2. Guarantee UFC fighters 50% of UFC annual revenues ($1bn in 2021)
  3. Provide long term healthcare to all fighters (you previously said  brain damage is part of the gig… imagine the NFL said that ). There are many UFC alums who have publicly said they are suffering from brain damage

You have 5 days to accept and implement the above by March 31, 2022. Once implemented I will immediately retire from boxing, enter USADA and agree to a 1 fight deal with UFC to fight weak chin Jorge.

To all UFC fighters — time to take a stand and create value for yourselves and peers. You deserve higher pay, you deserve long term healthcare and above all you deserve freedom. Support each other.

I am not your enemy, I am your advocate…who selfishly wants to KO a few of you to make some big bank.”

This prompted a quick response from Dillon Danis.

 

And several months ago Danis went on Helwani’s MMA Hour and basically refused to play by the rules. This resulted in the following exchange:

Helwani seemed fed up with the way Danis carries himself. And this response tweet appears to have pushed him beyond his limits. It all started with the following:

 Guys if you think life sucks right now just think you could have begged for 3 years to fight an 0-0 YouTuber and 3 years later still not be popular enough or good enough to even be considered a worthy opponent for him. Imagine that.

In other words, you could be
@dillondanis

 

But it didn’t end there – in fact in a later rant Helwani hinted that the whole thing might’ve been prompted by Danis’ constant requests for a retweet behind the scenes.

Before this whole rant Ariel tweeted a picture of Jake Paul with Drake and captioned it “Dub”.

In the same breath Helwani also roasted Paul’s ‘offer’ to Dana White – seeing it for what it is – a mindless publicity ploy.

Helwani appears to acknowledge that giving space to Paul is also a very bad idea.

And that’s ultimately the crux of it all. Both Danis and Paul exist in the publicity space – both are much better at marketing than fighting. And while Paul often claims he wants fighters to get better treatment he’s likely just leveraging being a thorn in Dana White’s side. To quote one of the best twitter accounts when it comes to analyzing UFC financials: