Last week, UFC fighter “Platinum” Mike Perry said something that would get a white athlete in virtually any other sport run out of their league. Taking to Instagram last Friday, Perry made a self-recorded 14-second video to explain his recent DNA test results. It started out vanilla as Perry announced, “The results came back French and German, British and Irish, and I was 2% African.” And then he lit the fuse: “So I am legally allowed to say the word n***a.” Cut. End scene.
I don’t know why I laughed as much as I did, but I found it hysterical. I guess I’m just a nasty, disgusting racist. If you follow the sport, Perry is one of these off-the-wall guys who is always saying or doing something outrageous, so it wasn’t exactly unexpected. His colorful personality—along with an ultra-violent, throw caution to the wind fighting style—has made him one of UFC’s breakout fan favorites whether he wins or loses. Still, we’ve seen other bad boys, rebels, and nonconformists go one step too far in the eyes of the media when it comes to the N-word or other remarks off-limits to white folks.
Maybe it’s the facial tattoos or the street dialect Perry speaks with. It could be that no social justice warrior wants to actually confront a trained fighter who grew up on the other side of the tracks and has been to prison. Or perhaps it’s merely the fact that he’s from Florida and puts the “man” in Florida man, but there was no coordinated media character assassination or contrived ACLU, SPLC, or NAACP faux-outrage that would surely go along with any white athlete in, say, the NFL making such a video.
https://youtu.be/32k59ikWdyo
It could be that it has nothing to do with Perry at all, because I’ve got another explanation. I call it my TMZ theory. I can’t be the only one who noticed how TMZ covered that Kanye West controversy with more credibility and integrity than any mainstream media organization out there. In the MSM, West’s “slavery is a choice” comment was cut and framed to appear in the cookie-cutter “Uncle Tom” light that we see any time a black American steps out of line to challenge the Democrat plantation mindset these corporations perpetuate.
As scores of paid-to-be-disappointed black talking heads from Don Lemon to that guy from Morehouse University who never met a white person who wasn’t racist paneled up in their echo chambers every day to bash Kanye West for a week, what did TMZ do? TMZ got Kanye West in studio and produced one of the realest, most honest and culturally significant TV moments in years, uncut and unedited.
When TMZ hosted Kanye West and Candice Owens, an actual debate took place. Both sides had to defend positions for 30 whole minutes. Harvey Levin didn’t cave to the peer pressure dictating he shout West down or moralize him with guilt and shame tactics. Instead, he openly agreed with some of West’s opinions and explained why he disagreed with others. Actual critical thinking was on full display on TMZ Live that day. Hell, the conversation even turned philosophical with the bit on humans acting with their brains vs. acting with their hearts and the concept of love vs. pragmatism. It was a breath of fresh air to me. While Kanye West’s stock was catapulted among Americans who wouldn’t normally listen to his music, TMZ came out as the big winner in my book.
https://youtu.be/lWJBWU7asEg
Back to Mike Perry. Perry didn’t get put in the public stockade and pelted with rotten eggs by the MMA media because the people at sherdog.com, bloodyelbow.com, MMAjunkie.com, and others aren’t rabid social justice warriors disguised as journalists. Follow the money and you’ll see that the handful of parent companies who own the bulk of the MSM don’t own these MMA publications. As a result, the focus of their writers is kept on covering and promoting the sport that they love instead of running wild with racial click bait like ESPN. It’s sad to say, but MMA media just proved itself to be more credible than the mainstream media in the same way TMZ did.
No matter how popular the UFC and the sport of MMA have gotten, they remain on the fringe in many ways. Fighters can be complex, unpredictable, and at times caustic people in general. Running headlong against the winds of political correctness in our modern era will always be inseparable from the sport because of this. The maverick qualities of its athletes are what makes the sport unique and a big part of why I love it so much. It reminds me of the golden era of the WWF when Stone Cold Steve Austin was smashing Coors Light cans over his head while cursing like a sailor and the Rock was calling people candy asses. People had a little more room to breathe (and laugh) back then without being smothered by the PC police.
How many shots of Patron would you have to pour down Dwayne Johnson’s throat for him to risk offending the LGBTQIAAP by publicly calling someone a candy ass these days?
I’ve been a hardcore fan of mixed martial arts since I was just a kid deemed too young to watch it by most people’s standards. Of course, politicians like John McCain would famously slander the sport as “human cockfighting,” “barbarism,” and “blood sport” unsuitable for decent people of any age during those early years when Las Vegas culinary unions were lobbying so hard to oppose it. The way politicians and the MSM frame any issue is almost always based on the almighty dollar, after all.
I was probably ten years old the first time I watched Tank Abbot knock out John Matua at UFC 6 on a VHS tape rented from Blockbuster by my friend Dave’s super cool and “progressive” mom. She drove a beat up white Corvette, and we all thought she was pretty damn attractive over the years, probably because everything about her style was a throwback to ’80s metal, hair bands.
Think about this. A “progressive” mom back then let my friends and I watch UFC 1, where Gerard Gordeau kicked Teila Tuli’s tooth out of his mouth and into the third row as we wrestled with each other in the living room and rejoiced like a couple of savages. “Progressives” of today would surely consider that child abuse. I like to think some of us older millennials are still part of that dying breed of American that wasn’t raised in bubble wrap and safe spaces and we’re better off for it.
While the violence might be what attracts fans to mixed martial arts, it’s not the only thing that keeps us wanting more. I’ve always admired tenets of respect, humility, and self-control that are ingrained in martial arts culture. Don’t think Mike Perry. Think Georges St-Pierre. MMA is a sport where two men enter a cage and simulate a fight to the death. When a fighter taps to a choke or is saved by the referee after going limp from a head kick, the logical conclusion is that their opponent would have killed them had the fight taken place in some war zone or back alley during a mugging. Stakes like that require respect regardless of how some fighters may market themselves to build their own brand or put butts in seats.
Stakes like that also require the Mike Perrys of the world and fans of the sport to agree that they won’t be deprived of a “Platinum” fight because someone feels comfortable enough in his own skin to make a joke using the word “n***a”—even if he’s not actually 2 percent African. Call him a Neanderthal, a thug, or a man who’s had too many concussions if you want. Call Kanye West mentally ill if it makes you feel better. This world needs more people who have jailbroken their minds from the PC prison.
If you’re into mixed martial arts or are interested in learning more about it, check out my OpsLens piece Bad Boyz: These 13 Cops are Also World Class Fighters.
