More than 150 years stand between the great Jem Mace and Mike Perry, each of whom were born with a set of knuckles that, by God, they were going to put to use.
Mace was one of the most famous bare-knuckle fighters of mid-to-late 1800s, revered by many who’ve donned the gloves for the last century-and-a-half since his 21-round conquest of Joe Goss on the hard banks of the River Thames to regain the heavyweight title in 1866.
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Perry? He is a throwback in time who wears his nose just as crooked as Irish Mike McCool did in the heyday of the naked knux, back in the 1870s. Perry’s trajectory has been an interesting one. When he put on the full-sized gloves, as he did for his match with Jake Paul, he was exquisitely ordinary. When he puts on the four-ounce variety, as he did during his run in the UFC, he had his moments, but was ultimately expendable.
Yet when he took the gloves off? Well, it’s been a scene. “Platinum” Perry has become the face of a bygone sport with the revitalized BKFC, and it just so happens that face has tattoos on it.
“I’ve always just been a fighter, and we’re each on our own journeys,” he says. “Everybody goes through things differently, but very similarly, we’re all just people out here trying to put our best foot forward. Some people try a little harder to put that best foot forward more than others.
“I’ve just been always grinding on the journey of a mixed martial artist, a competitor, a fighter, and it’s led me to great things. My fights have always spoken for themselves. I really mean it when I step in that ring, and I enjoy every moment.”
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Perry will take on ex-UFC veteran Jeremy Stephens at BKFC 82 on Saturday night, a main event that will be held in Newark, New Jersey — the very same New Jersey that old Paddy McGuigan represented when he (at times illicitly) let the bare knuckles fly in the 19th century. Perry has emerged as a top draw for the BKFC because he was tailor-made for the role. There’s always been a wildness of spirit to him that is right at home on the borders of the taboo.
Perry is a godsend to the BKFC. And for him, the BKFC was like a calling.
Since debuting against Julian Lane at KnuckleMania 2 in 2022, he is 5-0 on the fringe outer limits of the combat world. To say he loves it would be a step off. He craves it might be more like it. Those who censor the knuckle with gloves in the more civilized circles of mixed martial arts may not understand the kind of joy Perry gets out of “toeing the line,” but the atmosphere is electric when he makes the walk.
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If you’re in the front row at the Prudential Center on Saturday, he’d recommend you bring a slicker to catch the blood spatter.
“I like the heat, and I do like to get hot under them lights as well,” he says. “I’m bringing the fire to Brick City, man, going to show them a show they’ve never seen before, the first bare-knuckle event in the city up there.
“I’m looking to give them a bloody, incredibly exciting show.”
Blood is something Perry is readily willing to sacrifice. There is a picture BKFC posted on social media of Perry standing there, looking into the offing of the gladiatorial sphere, a streak of dark blood as thick as pomegranate syrup running from his hairline down the side of his nose, all the way to his mouth. It’s a piece of marketing gore only BKFC could romanticize, and — because it’s Perry — be received just as romantically.
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A picture so gruesome that X put a warning on it for sensitive material. Yet it encapsulates the lengths Perry is willing to go in there.
In his first BKFC fight against Lane, he battered the skull of Lane to the point that he disfigured his hands. Going back to John L. Sullivan’s day, the biggest fear of the bare-knuckle fighter isn’t that he’ll lose teeth or get his nose shattered, it’s that he’ll break the small bones within his hands, and therefore be rendered helpless.
That happened to Perry in that first fight. He busted his hands up so bad he couldn’t throw with any kind of abandon.
“After the first round, my hands were pretty bad, and then I just kind of outboxed him the rest of the time, but I just didn’t have that edge, that extra hard squeeze on my hands,” Perry says. “And [BKFC founder] David Feldman gave me great advice after that fight. He called me the next day and he’s like, ‘Look man, when these guys are fighting, they’re throwing, they’re squeezing their fists as hard as they can.’ And a lot of boxers — when we wear gloves in a fight or when we’re wearing gloves and training — our hands are open, and we kind of close it on contact.”
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Here he holds up his golden possessions, his fingers no longer gnarled, before balling them into fists.
“It just doesn’t work in bare knuckle,” he says. “So then after Feldman told me that — to squeeze the fist tight and make sure there’s no loose gaps in there — I’ve been squeezing these things and shoving ’em in people’s faces. I mean, maybe the damage that my hands took in that Lane fight kind of prepared them for more in the future.”
Muay Thai fighters have been known to kick wooden posts with their shins to help strengthen bone matter. Perry strengthened his hands on Lane’s skull.
And since then he’s practiced his new techniques on the head of Michael “Venom” Page, happily fighting an impromptu extra round that night so a winner could be declared. Then it was Luke Rockhold, who had some teeth come apart before realizing what he was doing was asinine. Then Eddie Alvarez, the pride of Philadelphia, who didn’t stand a chance. That fight earned Perry the “King of Violence” title. Finally it was Thiago Alves, who lasted but a minute against Perry’s free-swinging sadism.
Mike Perry in action during his 2022 bare-knuckle fight against Michael Page at the OVO Arena Wembley in London. Perry won by decision.
(Bradley Collyer – PA Images via Getty Images)
“Now Stephens is coming to meet me, and we’ll see how he does,” Perry says. “If he meets me in the middle, if he runs away, I’m too fast, I’m too sharp, I’m too on point for this, my weight, my weight class, everything.”
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This fight will take place at 175 pounds, which means Perry needed to shed some weight.
“I didn’t want to cut to ’75, but ever since I’ve gotten into it, it’s been good,” he says. “I’ve been doing keto for 90 days, and I mean, I’m 12 weeks into this camp. I’m such an incredible athlete [right now]. I’ve trained so hard for this, day in and day out, and I’ve been grinding every day.”
James Figg. Bob Fitzsimmons. The great Hen Pierce. John Morrissey.
The bare-knuckle fighters of yore who were replaced by men in gloves. Some of them slipped into those gloves as naturally as you’d please, going on to do historic things in the ring. Some of them refused these advances. John L. Sullivan held out for as long as he could, not wanting to partake in a game that was changing before his eyes.
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He later caved to the current of the times.
Over 100 years later, the gloves have come back off. And there stands Mike Perry. Proud bare-knuckle throwback. Ready to connect us back to the London Prize Ring of Pierce Egan’s day, when fist fights were just that — fist fights.
“As long as people are chatting, and as long as I know they’re interested to tune in and watch, it’s good,” he says. “And I do believe that I have something special, because I know when I watch my own bare-knuckle fights that it just seems different to me. The level of intensity that I bring to a fight. I mean, my training partners, we all know it. We all see it. When I train with guys, they know that it’s going up a notch.
“I don’t care if we’ve been playing pussyfoot patty-cake all day. Every round I do is a different level.”