Dan Bilzerian pretty much does what he wants all the time.
From hedonistic parties aboard luxury yachts to tearing up shooting ranges and driving any motorised vehicle with a V8 engine, 36-year-old Bilzerian calls the shots on his own life.
As the heir to a small fortune, he lives a life many men crave – apparently – because he can.
So when he announced he’d like to take a shot in the Octagon, many MMA fans took him seriously.
After all, he’s rich enough to pay a lot of fighters to submit – and everyone has a price, as we’re all learning the hard way with the Mayweather/McGregor match.
Naming the things on his Bucket List, Bilzerian told MMA Junkie Radio:
Thailand’s on there. I want to go surfing in Fiji. I want to go heli-skiing in Alaska. I have wanted to do [an MMA fight]…
I’d like to fight, but I’ve got to do a real camp. I don’t want to go in there and fucking half-ass it. I’ve never half-assed anything in my life, so if I’m going to do it, I really want to do it.
Right now, I’ve actually been taking a little bit of time off from the partying and the crazy shit. So it wouldn’t be bad.
Bilzerian is 36, which is late in the day to get into MMA fighting by anyone’s standards – and while he’s not exactly unfit, the professional poker player knows time is running out to check the Octagon off the list.
He explained:
I’ll be 37 this year, so I better do it pretty fucking soon if I want to do it. It’s tough nowadays because these fucking kids are training from the time they’re 6 or 8 – by the time they get in there, they’re so well-versed.
I’d really want my first fight to be something I was pretty sure I was going to win.
It would suck to start off and just get your ass whooped but who knows? I would like to go over to Thailand and train a little bit. Mike Swick has been trying to get me to go over there and a few other people. I think it’d be cool.
The ‘Instagram King’, who trains regularly at Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas, does seem to have given a fight some thought, and he sounds very determined to go about it in the right way.
Hopefully his time with the NAVY Seals will come in handy when he applies himself to the strict training schedule and lifestyle fighting demands.
We’ll just see what the guys who have been training their whole lives make of Bilzerian’s Bucket List.
A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.