Beneil Dariush fights for the lord.
After coming off a big win over Renato Moicano in his last outing, the perennial lightweight title contender returns to the Octagon for a high-stakes bout against Benoit Saint-Denis on Saturday night at UFC 322.
Before taking on the ‘God of War’ on MMA’s biggest stage, Dariush recently spoke about preaching in the name of Jesus during a trip to Abu Dhabi, where approximately 75% of the total population is Muslim.
“I have preached the name of Jesus in a Muslim majority country, but this is not so – I have real friends who are missionaries and… in several countries where they would be killed if they did that in public,” Dariush said during his UFC 322 interview at media day. “So I understand it’s not easy to do, but it wasn’t. Sometimes we have spent too much on it, and I don’t want this to take away from the true people who are spreading the gospel in dangerous areas.
“I was never in any danger. … Everyone was very nice to me afterwards. They just wanted to make sure they made it clear, ‘Listen, we believe in Jesus as a prophet and this and that,’ but there was never any danger, you know what I mean?”
“My legacy is Christ. I don’t really care what people look back on [at]Dariush added. “I did this for a lot of selfish reasons, because I just love to fight, and… I hope what, even though I came in with the wrong motivation, I hope people will remember that the reason I fought was because I have a love for the Lord.”
On Friday, Dariush weighed 157.2 pounds, 1.2 pounds over the limit for his non-title fight with Saint-Denis. The fight will go ahead as planned, but ‘Benny’ will forfeit 20% of his fight purse.
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