Photo by Mike Roach/Zuffa LLC
Mike Perry made the interesting choice of only bringing his girlfriend to corner his latest UFC fight. Here’s how he thinks the whole thing worked out.
Mike Perry stunned a lot of the MMA fandom leading up to his fight with Mickey Gall at UFC on ESPN 12 when he revealed his plan to bring his new girlfriend in as his one and only corner … which we suppose isn’t that surprising. His former partner, once dubbed “The Platinum Princess,” cornered him in past fights too (and it was wild).
But this time he also decided to forego a camp and training partners and just have his girlfriend hold mitts for him. They were a team of two, and what seemed like a joke or prank or promotional stunt turned out to be pretty close to exactly what Perry said it was.
And he did it. The crazy son of a bitch, he did it. They did it. Perry won the fight decisively on the judge’s scorecards, walking through Gall’s punches on the feet and controlling him on top when the fight went to the ground. In between rounds Perry got an earful not from his own corner but by listening to Mickey’s corner. After the fight, he declared the experiment a rousing success.
“The queen, Latory Gonzalez,” he told ESPN after the fight. “Bow down, bro. We the winners tonight!”
“She did a great job,” Perry said at the post fight press conference. “She kept it very simple, she shouted a couple things I heard her during the fight and I remember telling myself ‘Okay there you go, she getting into it now.’ She was like ‘Keep your hand up!’ There was one time he swung and just missed. She ‘Get your hand up!’ All right. And then in the corner, she was in there rubbing the ice on me, she kept asking me ‘Hey is this, where do you want, what else do you want, what can I do.’ And she was trying to do more for me and it was really cool just sitting there quiet and just thinking about how the next round was gonna go.”
“My girl did such a great job bringing in the stool and the bucket with the water,” Perry added later. “I was thinking sometimes coaches be so ready to get in there and tell you something like they think they’re gonna make a difference for you … and it’s really for themselves. They want to feel like they told you something that helped you win this UFC fight. And they’re just getting money and attention and trying to take credit for what your work has done. Like, bro, carry that bucket and bring me that stool. She looked better than any coach all-time bringing that stool and that bucket. She was so pretty with that little ninja face mask, killing it all night long.”
“So yeah it’s good to keep it simple, I feel like guys yell too much and they’re saying stuff, you can’t even think. Are you even trying to listen to this person? Should I stop trying to listen to this person? Listen, your words ain’t gonna make a difference, bro. And his coaches words wasn’t making a difference. I’m in front of you trying to punch you in the face, you gotta deal with that. That’s it. You gotta deal with that. Not your coaches. Not your game plan. None of that.”
As far as to whether or not he’d keep her in his corner? So long as the pandemic keeps things limited to corner only, the answer is yes. After that?
“Hey who knows if we keep it, we finish it as champions?” he said. “We gonna find a place near the beach to hang out. Drink mai-tais, do some muay thai. And find some teammates, we’ll see if we can find two to fill the other empty slots and a third would have to be very valuable to replace my baby. But I do believe that if they bring the stands back and the fans, she would look great in the front row in a pretty little dress cheering for me.”
Perry also went further in depth on his training camp or lack thereof, which he feels left him fully energized for the fight.
“I let my body rest, I didn’t let anybody tell me I needed to be working when I knew I needed to be resting,” he said. “And I didn’t let anyone tell me I needed to rest when I knew I needed to work. I did a lot of rest for this. Some people might say I didn’t even train for this. But you can just look at my physique based on the way I looked, I had a gas tank in there. Resting makes me so strong, I’m one of the most strong dudes naturally out there. I believe that. I can take a shot and I can give a better shot.”
But in the end he recognized that he needs a proper home to train and improve, and it’s sounding like American Top Team in South Florida.
“I wanna get some beef inside myself to feel that 185 pound weight class,” he said. “I want to learn how to fight one of the best guys there so I can fight a middleweight Englishman, you know who I’m talking about. I want to fight that guy. He doesn’t deserve to have his name come out of my mouth. He’s a despicable person. And I can’t lie, I’m not that big. I need to feel that, I do want to train with Yoel Romero, he knows I want to come out there. We got the same management team, him and Jorge Masvidal.”
“There’s potential match-ups, I could fight any man on this planet, it really doesn’t matter. But if I go train with somebody, I just wanna get better so I can build for us and Platinum Martial Arts. I gotta look out and find some more experience, and it’s time for that right now. We’re probably coming to Miami, to be honest with you. So I look forward to training with Yoel.”
As for when we might see “Platinum” again? Considering he’s got some serious back taxes to pay, maybe sooner than you’d think.
“Today, tomorrow, next month. I don’t know, bro,” Perry said. “I’m gonna chill a little bit, I ain’t gonna front. I’m gonna get to the beach. I got some things I gotta handle outside of fighting, outside of training. I’ll always be ready to fight though, so let them call. Talk about going to Dubai, going to the Island. We built for the Island, man. We ready for the Island, we gonna go, we gonna fight, we gonna show up, and we gonna put paws on people.”
But one thing is for sure, he’s not listening to any of the haters and their opinions on how he operates.
“I do this for me and her,” he said. “I do this for us and I was successful tonight and we’re going to enjoy our lives together and we’re going to build on our future together. And most of y’all ain’t gonna be allowed in, bro. I don’t mess with y’all. Y’all just wanna take my time and I don’t have time for y’all. I have time for myself and her.”