UFC welterweight Mike Perry has been given leeway on making plenty of questionable comments over race and ethnicity before, but one fellow fighter thinks he finally crossed the line.
Perry, who’s nicknamed “Platinum,” got into a Twitter spat over the weekend with actor Michael Jai White, a martial arts practitioner who appeared in the movie “Blood and Bone” with the late Kimbo Slice. Perry said Slice would “beat the (expletive) outta” White, then suggested he and White should fight each other bare knuckle.
To which White responded:
Maybe if MP learned my “Prison Movie Technique” he wouldn’t be ranked #20?I got no time for playground callouts Brother but holla when you come thru and maybe I’ll have time to give you a personal demo. Just DM me Bro. It really ain’t that hard!
That seemed to be the end of it, as White, who has 465,000 Twitter followers to Perry’s 91,000, simply dropped the mic and walked away.
On Tuesday, though, Perry tried to troll White into continuing the conversation, using the slang version of the N-word, which is often considered acceptable for African-Americans to refer to one another, but not for other groups to use.
Perry then doubled down and defended his reference by saying, “A white man said that to you because you straight-up being one.”
This appears to have been the point that Perry, who has a history of making borderline remarks, finally has caused others to speak up. On Wednesday, UFC strawweight Angela Hill, an African-American woman, denounced Perry’s words over Twitter.
“White people using ‘n**a’ to insult a black person, I don’t give a f*** what your intentions were, it ain’t right,” the former Invicta FC champion said while quote-tweeting Perry. “The few times I’ve run into Perry during fights he’s seemed cool, this isn’t cool.”
This is not the first time Perry has made such comments. In 2018, he used the slang version of the N-word in a tweet at former UFC welterweight champion Tyron Woodley.
In the face of backlash, Perry has tried to justify his usage of the word by claiming a home DNA test showed he has two percent African ancestry, but that drew more criticism from black fighters, including Gerald Harris and Aljamain Sterling.
As of this writing, Perry has not responded to Hill’s tweet.
Angela Hill denounces Mike Perry's use of N-word against actor Michael Jai White: 'This isn't cool'