Mike Perry has become the face of bare-knuckle fighting while amassing an undefeated record and a huge following since joining the roster at BKFC.
But the former UFC welterweight previously put his BKFC career on hold to take a boxing match versus Jake Paul and now he’s doing the same thing to return to MMA for a showdown against Nate Diaz as part of the Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano card on May 16. While there’s no ill feelings towards the “King of Violence,” BKFC president David Feldman admits the promotion
had something big in the works for Perry when he decided to take the Diaz fight instead.
“Honestly we didn’t have much to do with that at all,” Feldman told MMA Fighting. “I wish him the best of luck, I really do. These guys are going in there and risking their lives to make money and he’s going to make money and I’m happy for him there. But it wasn’t something that we were involved in and it didn’t go down the way I wanted it to go down, to be quite frank.
“[Our relationships is] good. I wanted something different. I had something in the works and they chose to this instead because they had the one out on it. They chose to do this instead. I had something really big planned, huge planned for them and they chose to do this instead.”
Feldman had previously teased that he was working on a matchup for Perry that would have been “the biggest name that he ever fought times five” and it was just a matter of sorting out some details to officially book the fight.
Obviously that didn’t happen because the Diaz fight came together instead, although Feldman says Perry initially wanted to do both but there was just no way that would have worked.
“Because they wanted to do both but timing wasn’t going to allow both,” Feldman said. “It is what it is. I wish him the best.”
Perry previously revealed that he still has two fights remaining on his BKFC contract but his main priority right now is preparing for the matchup against Diaz in May.
As far as his future goes, Feldman expects Perry to eventually return to BKFC, although he couldn’t even predict when that might happen. That said, Feldman is happy that Perry is getting a hefty payday because he understands that all prize fighters are operating on limited time.
“You’ll probably see him back in BKFC,” Feldman said. “It’s all good. Again, he’s never been disrespectful, he’s never done anything bad to us, Mike himself, at all. He’s always been very nice and very thankful but at the end of the day, he’s getting opportunities and he has to take them. It wasn’t the way we wanted to do it. But it is what it is.
“I think it’s a good fight for him now. Fighting the Nate Diaz that he’s getting now. I don’t think five years ago, it’s probably not a good fight for him.”
Because there’s so many unknowns about the main event between Rousey and Carano considering they’ve been out of action for a combined 27 years and the co-main event features a heavily favored Francis Ngannou taking on Philipe Lins, the fight between Perry and Diaz might actually be the most anticipated fight matchup on that entire card.
But Feldman knows deep down as much as fans are excited to see Perry and Diaz throw down, he guarantees watching them clash in a bare-knuckle fight would have been dramatically bigger for everybody involved.
“100 percent better [in bare-knuckle],” Feldman said. “Just announcing it as a bare-knuckle fight, it would have got 10 times the hype that it got and it got a lot of hype, don’t get me wrong. It’s different and people want to see it in bare-knuckle. That would have been it. You talk about a bloodbath, that was a bloodbath.”
