Beneil Dariush

Beneil Dariush has been very close to his mother ever since he was a child. When he decided to join MMA, his mother wasn’t ready to see her son fight in a ring and she almost stopped talking to him. When Beneil’s sister talked to their mother, only then she understood and started supporting her son.

Beneil loves spending time with family and when he is not travelling or training for a fight, he visits his family and his cousins, who have been very close to him since childhood.

Beneil is also involved in charity work and donated a generous amount of sum for the 2010 Haiti earthquake survivors. He also sends money to the poor Assyrian people in the Middle East. They have been a minority due to their extensive belief in Christianity, which doesn’t set well with the Muslims of the Middle Eastern countries.

Beneil Dariush was born on May 6, 1989, in Hamadan, Iran. His parents were of Assyrian descent. Their life back in Iran wasn’t very good and the entire family had to move to the USA to provide a better life to their children. Beneil was 9 at that time and wasn’t very excited about moving to a strange new place.

In America, Beneil had a massive joint family and he grew up among more than twenty cousins and sisters. The family indulged in farming and along with pursuing his education, Beneil helped his father and uncles with agriculture, which helped him achieve an athletic build early on.

When his family first came to the USA, none of them knew a word of English and that, in a way, cut them off with others kids in the neighbourhood and Beneil and his sister Beraeil Dariush spent most of the time playing with their cousins and this turned Beneil into a socially awkward kid.

When he was 18 and getting along with the English language, his interest sparked in martial arts as he located a jiu-jitsu gym near his house. His mother didn’t allow him to enroll in there and Beneil went there himself. He liked what he saw and joined the classes despite his mother’s outrage against it.

Just out of high school and looking forward to his college education, Beneil started training in BJJ in October 2007 under Bruno Paulista and with the perfect guidance of his coach, Beneil started participating in local jiu-jitsu tournaments and the trophies started coming in. His training under Bruno went on until the tragedy, which landed Bruno in a hospital after which Beneil joined one of USA’s top BJJ academies, Gracie Barra Northridge.

His training for MMA started during the time he was touring around the world bagging BJJ honours. He won the Pan-American Championship in Blue belt in 2009 and achieved the second spot in the World Championships in 2009, 2010 and 2012. Needless to say, he rose to the national fame in the sport, but money wasn’t much so he shifted his focus to appear in UFC, the grand MMA event and his career achievements were enough for the UFC management to give Beneil a fair chance in the ring to exhibit his skills.

Before UFC though, Beneil Dariush had already participated in MMA fights for different promotions. After starting in 2009 till 2013, he remained undefeated in all the fights that he fought under Respect in the Cage, High Fight Rock and Samurai Pro Sports promotions. Four of those victories came to him in the first round, which meant that he was a force to reckon with; he just required a bigger stage.

He won ‘RITC Lightweight Championship’ against Trace Gray in a January 2013 match and defended it successfully against Jason Meaders in May 2013. The latter was his last fight before he got associated with the UFC.

On January 15, 2014, Beneil made his in-ring debut in UFC and his match was scheduled with Jason High, but he pulled out due to some illness and Charlie Brenneman was selected as his opponent. Charlie was making a comeback after a long hiatus and compared to the young and energetic Beneil, he seemed weaker in the fight since the first few minutes. Beneil easily won the fight in the first round via submission.

In April 2014, he faced Ramsay Nijem in his second UFC match but he could not repeat his impressive performance and Ramsay knocked Beneil out in the first round.