UFC's silence on Mike Perry's Racism Condones That Racism
Or What kind of message is UFC sending to fighters who feel Mike Perry’s words could have been directed at them?
Welcome to the latest C’mon Now newsletter. This is the place where I’ll share my thoughts on all the goings-on in MMA. Those thoughts could range from media criticism to advice for folks looking to get into MMA writing to why certain fighters or managers are not good for the sport.
Mike Perry has tweeted some stupid things over the past few days and the UFC has not done — or said – anything about it. That’s a problem that I’ll discuss.
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I’ll admit that I was unaware of the brewing beef between UFC fighter Mike Perry and actor Michael Jai White. I was probably oblivious because, it’s kind of silly for a professional fighter to try to get a fight against anyone who is not in the UFC. It’s even sillier for a 28-year-old UFC signed fighter to call for a backyard bare knuckle fight against a 52-year-old actor. But hey, it’s Mike Perry, so silliness is to be expected.
That all happened on January 3. I’m going to assume Perry wan’t satisfied that White didn’t accept the challenge because on January 7, Perry was back at it, and let’s just say he raised the stakes a bit too high with his choice of language.
After stewing for a few minutes, Perry went a bit harder at White. While his first tweet took a giant leap over the line, it was the next one that took it so far out there that there was no way Perry could even see the line anymore.
A lot of folks were flabbergasted by Perry’s racist tweets — and yes, no matter how hard some MMA dunderheads tried to defend Perry, that shit was racist. One person who wasn’t cool with Perry was UFC fighter Angela Hill.
Yet, here we are, more than 24 hours removed from Perry’s tweets and those tweets are still live for everyone to see. Which means:
a) Perry is standing by his stupidity
b) No one from Perry’s team told him to delete or apologize for his foolishness
c) The UFC did not step up and tell Perry to remove that nonsense
I would like to believe that Perry has at least one friend or a member of his management team that would tell him to cut that shit out, but I guess he doesn’t, which is both alarming and telling, but it’s the third one that concerns me.
There was a brief period when the UFC enforced its code of conduct. It was a few years ago, but Nate Diaz, Matt Mitrione and Donald Cerrone all paid some price for saying or tweeting different levels of dumbness, but since then… nothing. We’ve had a long list of fighters saying homophobic shit, fighters using women as props, and Perry’s dropped this racial slur on more than one occasion.
I would have thought with the new ownership group, there would have been an uptick in trying to appear professional, especially since that group wants to go public at some point, but nope…nothing. And that should cause concern.
This is the type of behavior that if it’s not stomped down, will only get worse. It’s like a child pushing boundaries. Each time things will go a little further until it’s so far out of control it’s futile to attempt to rein the bad behavior in or recall when or where it all began.
It’s the UFC’s job to put the kibosh on this type of talk and these type of actions. When the UFC ignores statements like Perry’s or worse acknowledges them and just plays it off as part of the fight game, it not only sends the message that its acceptable, it condones the behavior and encourages the next knucklehead with poor impulse control to say or do something worse.
The UFC should have acted swiftly against Perry, it didn’t act at all. What kind of message does that send to the fighters who feel Perry’s words could have just as easily been directed at them? Not a good one, that’s for sure.
Do you know something about UFC, USADA, an MMA manager or a fighter, that I should know? You can email me at trent.reinsmith@gmail.com or contact me via secure messaging on Telegram at trentreinsmith.
