Mike Perry is leaving bare-knuckle fighting. On Tuesday’s episode of The Ariel Helwani Show, the man they call Platinum confirmed he’s moving on from BKFC and said his next fights will be with gloves on, with MMA as the plan.
“That bare-knuckle stuff is like a cheat code... I was good at it. It was fun. I made some noise doing it. And I’m ready for another challenge,” Perry said, per clips Helwani posted on X. “I think MMA is in my foreseeable future, and I’m gonna give it my best shot.” He added that he’d done his thing in BKFC, and that “I think it’s gloves for me.”
The announcement wasn’t much of a surprise to BKFC. Ahead of the promotion’s Newark event, CEO David Feldman was asked whether Perry’s next fight would be under the BKFC banner and answered “I don’t think so.” He didn’t sound bitter about it. “Look, Mike was good for us, and we were great for Mike, and you know, he may be moving on to some other things, and that’s okay,” Feldman said, adding that the two sides were still talking and that Perry’s camp would “have some news pretty soon about where he’s going.”
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The paperwork may be messier than the goodbye. Reports have suggested Perry still has two fights left on his BKFC deal, and a 2027 bout with Darren Till had been discussed, though nothing was ever agreed. Till, for his part, beat Yoel Romero at BKFC 94 on September 26 and has one fight left on his own three-bout contract.
Perry’s last bare-knuckle appearance came on October 4, 2025, when he stopped Jeremy Stephens in the fifth round to defend the symbolic King of Violence title. Since then he has been everywhere except a BKFC ring. He fought Nate Diaz in an MMA bout on May 16, 2026, on Jake Paul’s first MVP MMA card. A planned MMA fight with Dillon Danis for August 29 in Orlando fell apart when Danis withdrew, and Perry instead headlined the Duel Arena card against Brandon Jenkins, losing by first-round TKO. That’s the fight he’s still recovering from. Perry told Helwani he’s doing OK after the gruesome injury. “I’m super humble now. The game has humbled me,” he said.
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This isn’t his first time leaving a big promotion. Perry finished his UFC contract on April 10, 2021, with a unanimous decision loss to Daniel Rodriguez at UFC Vegas 23, having dropped seven of his previous 10 fights. He went to free agency and BKFC signed him to a lucrative deal. The relationship got rocky after he boxed Jake Paul on July 20, 2024, and was stopped in the sixth round. BKFC co-owner Conor McGregor then publicly declared Perry fired. Perry still went back and beat Stephens. Outside of fighting, he launched the Dirty Boxing Championship in 2024, and Jon Jones came aboard as co-owner in March 2025.
My take: Perry deserves credit for saying the quiet part out loud. Bare-knuckle rewarded exactly what he does well, which is standing in the pocket, eating one and returning two, with nobody shooting a double on him. MMA asks a different set of questions, and the last time he answered them full-time he lost seven of 10. The Jenkins loss and a fresh injury don’t make the climb easier, so I’d want to see real wrestling work in camp before I take any MMA booking seriously. Also, he talked to Helwani about wanting to grow in “a more grown-up way” and said he doesn’t “wanna get so angry over anything anymore.” A few minutes later he said he was thinking about flying to this week’s RAF event to confront Danis, and that “If I see him, we gotta squabble, bro.” Growth is a process. Watch the RAF crowd shots this weekend.
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