Is It Time to Get Out of the Mike Perry Business?

We saw the latest chapter in the Mike Perry story with a decision loss to UFC veteran Tim Means.

Before this fight, there was already a large group of UFC and MMA fans, in general, calling for the UFC to cut ties with Perry.

Following the loss, that group has grown even larger.

Why do people want the UFC to cut Mike Perry, and should they?

If you’ve never heard of Mike Perry, he is notable, but the unranked fighter in the UFC’s Welterweight division. Perry currently holds a good, but an unremarkable record of 14 wins to seven losses. So why is there such a large group of fans so concerned with a middling fighter?

Well, the real problems with Mike Perry come outside the cage, but now they have started to bleed into his fights as well.

Mike Perry has the “Conor McGregor-like” aura in that whether you like him or hate him, you usually tune in to see his fight. The problem is that unlike McGregor, Perry doesn’t have the overwhelming skill level to back up his antics as Conor does.

We’ll go through the list of reasons why the UFC should consider cutting ties with Perry, but that previous commentary about his skill level is important to list beforehand.

Weight Cutting

These issues with Perry are not in chronological order, but more in order of severity. The first and probably least serious issue would be the most recent. Perry missed weight in the aforementioned fight against Tim Means. This is nothing new in MMA. Fighters miss weight all the time. But the way in which Perry reacted to being overweight was the last straw for Perry’s detractors.

Usually, when a fighter misses weight or is in fear they may miss weight, they are very apologetic, fearful, and upset. Perry was smiling, gloating, and even said “not even close” when stepping on the scale.

To be so callused to blatantly break the rules and smile about it takes a truly inconsiderate person. Perry was also seen indulging in fast food the week of the fight to even further home the “I don’t give a damn” mentality that Perry often portrays on social media.

Jackson Wink Incident

The next incident was the infamous Jackson Wink fight against Donald Cerrone. To fully explain fighter camps would probably need its own article. But to sum it up, fighters train in camps. Sometimes these camps are smaller, unknown camps that may have one or two well-known fighters. Other times, there are large camps with tons of established names and many fighters will even relocate their families to these camps where they can train. Jackson Wink is one of these larger camps.

Both Perry and Cerrone were members of this camp until the UFC made a fight between the two. This is very rare for two fighters in the same camp to fight one another, but they did so anyway.

The problem was that since both fighters would need to train in the facility, they would know exactly how each person would prepare for the other. This led to the camp essentially picking a side, and they chose Perry. Cerrone infamously left one of the best camps in the world because of this and ended up beating Perry in the fight.

Perry’s Bar Fight

These next two are serious legal issues and they are both recent and still developing. Perry was seen this summer getting into a bar fight. Now it seems counterintuitive to be mad at a professional fighter for fighting. We also don’t know what caused this fight in the first place. Everything is alleged by the people involved. However, it is a terrible look for both Perry and the UFC having a trained killer out in the street hurting non-fighters in an uncontrolled environment.

Perry sought professional help following this incident but it is still a terrible look regardless.

Domestic Violence

Finally, over the summer, Mike Perry was accused of domestic violence by his ex-wife Danielle Nickerson. Perry and his ex-wife split this past summer and one of the reasons listed for the split was due to Perry allegedly abusing Nickerson multiple times.

Perry has had to answer about these allegations multiple times at press conferences since the allegations were made, but he completely denies them all. This is again still developing so it is still to be seen how it will all go.

Taking all of that into account, the UFC should probably get out of the Mike Perry business. The amount of things that come with Mike Perry is truly not worth the time or the headache for the UFC.

Hopefully, Perry can get his stuff together and he and the UFC can work together for a long time. But it seems as though it’s been a few too many incidents for the fans to tolerate.