Perry accuses Danis of planning Orlando withdrawal all along after last-minute injury pull-out

Mike Perry is convinced Dillon Danis never intended to fight him in Orlando, after Danis withdrew from their scheduled Duel Arena headliner on Thursday citing an arm injury — just two days before the event.

The bout was set to top Saturday’s card at the Kia Center in Orlando, Fla., but at Thursday’s pre-fight press conference it was announced that Danis was out. UFC veteran Brandon Jenkins was quickly booked as Perry’s replacement opponent, with the contest moving up a weight class from welterweight to middleweight.

“My reaction was, ‘How? When?’” Perry told MMA Fighting. “Because as you can see on his interview with Sean O’Malley and Tim Welch, his wrist is healed up, but I don’t know when that injury happened. He may have told someone — I even saw three days ago that my new opponent was posting he’s ready to fight this weekend in case anything happens. This was three days ago, no one wanted to let me in on it.”

Perry said the timing of events left him with little doubt about Danis’s intentions. “Obviously, this happened to Dillon not yesterday. This happened whenever it happened. It’s kind of f*cked up, like he never planned on doing this, and it makes me think this was always their plan.”

The late switch also cost Perry financially. “Without the other famous guy, I’ve got to take a huge pay cut, a massive pay cut to take this new fight,” he said. “Which you would think, as a professional athlete, accepting something in the last second is going to give you more, rather than much, much less.”

Danis has developed a well-documented pattern of withdrawing from high-profile bouts, and Perry said his team had quietly prepared for exactly this scenario. “We prepare for things like this,” Perry said. “I even said a month out, I’m going to be prepared to fight in the main event on Aug. 29 against whoever it may be, because people have been making the joke that maybe he’s not going to come — he’s the pull-out expert. So we just prepare to go to battle, and whoever stands across from me is in for some freakin’ trouble.”

Danis later released a video attributing his withdrawal to an arm injury. He is still expected to wrestle Arman Tsarukyan at RAF 14 on October 3, though Perry cast doubt on whether that appearance will materialise either.

Perry now faces Jenkins at middleweight on Saturday night in what remains the Duel Arena main event.