John L. Sullivan\u2019s day<\/a>, the biggest fear of the bare-knuckle fighter isn\u2019t that he\u2019ll lose teeth or get his nose shattered, it\u2019s that he\u2019ll break the small bones within his hands, and therefore be rendered helpless.<\/p>\nThat happened to Perry in that first fight. He busted his hands up so bad he couldn\u2019t throw with any kind of abandon.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter 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,\u201d Perry says. \u201cAnd [BKFC founder] David Feldman gave me great advice after that fight. He called me the next day and he’s like, \u2018Look man, when these guys are fighting, they’re throwing, they’re squeezing their fists as hard as they can.\u2019 And a lot of boxers \u2014 when we wear gloves in a fight or when we’re wearing gloves and training \u2014 our hands are open, and we kind of close it on contact.\u201d<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
Here he holds up his golden possessions, his fingers no longer gnarled, before balling them into fists.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just doesn\u2019t work in bare knuckle,\u201d he says. \u201cSo then after Feldman told me that \u2014 to squeeze the fist tight and make sure there\u2019s no loose gaps in there \u2014 I\u2019ve been squeezing these things and shoving \u2019em 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Muay Thai fighters have been known to kick wooden posts with their shins to help strengthen bone matter. Perry strengthened his hands on Lane\u2019s skull.<\/p>\n
And since then he\u2019s practiced his new techniques on the head of Michael \u201cVenom\u201d 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\u2019t stand a chance. That fight earned Perry the \u201cKing of Violence\u201d title. Finally it was Thiago Alves, who lasted but a minute against Perry\u2019s free-swinging sadism.<\/p>\n
![\"Mike](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/fad634e0-a077-11f0-9ff6-19eabab22ed9.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Mike Perry in action during his 2022 bare-knuckle fight against Michael Page at the OVO Arena Wembley in London. Perry won by decision.<\/p>\n
(Bradley Collyer – PA Images via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
\u201cNow Stephens is coming to meet me, and we\u2019ll see how he does,\u201d Perry says. \u201cIf he meets me in the middle, if he runs away, I\u2019m too fast, I\u2019m too sharp, I\u2019m too on point for this, my weight, my weight class, everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
This fight will take place at 175 pounds, which means Perry needed to shed some weight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t want to cut to ’75, but ever since I\u2019ve gotten into it, it\u2019s been good,” he says. “I\u2019ve been doing keto for 90 days, and I mean, I\u2019m 12 weeks into this camp. I\u2019m such an incredible athlete [right now]. I\u2019ve trained so hard for this, day in and day out, and I\u2019ve been grinding every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
James Figg. Bob Fitzsimmons. The great Hen Pierce. John Morrissey.<\/p>\n
The bare-knuckle fighters of yore who were replaced by men in gloves. Some of them slipped into those gloves as naturally as you\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
He later caved to the current of the times.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s day, when fist fights were just that \u2014 fist fights.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs long as people are chatting, and as long as I know they’re interested to tune in and watch, it\u2019s good,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t care if we’ve been playing pussyfoot patty-cake all day. Every round I do is a different level.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 150 years stand between the great Jem Mace and Mike Perry, each of whom were born…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,119892,34465,32940,802,52588,52585,78479,119893,25659,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-188665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-bare-knuckles","11":"tag-bare-knuckle-boxing","12":"tag-bkfc","13":"tag-boxing","14":"tag-david-feldman","15":"tag-jeremy-stephens","16":"tag-julian-lane","17":"tag-mike-mccool","18":"tag-mike-perry","19":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}