Mike Perry’s ex-wife Danielle Nickerson has detailed disturbing allegations of domestic violence that led to the break-up of their marriage earlier this year.
In an interview with MMAjunkie, Nickerson revealed that she’d been physically assaulted by the UFC fighter several times during their relationship, with the worst incident having occurred as recently as February of this year.
That night they went to a nightclub to visit friends, but then Perry got into an verbal argument with a woman, which led to her pouring a drink over his head and the welterweight fighter retaliating by hitting her, causing the victim to fall off of a high-chair.
Things only spiralled further out of control after he was kicked out of the club as he then proceeded to start driving Nickerson home drunk and in a foul mood, speeding through a red light in the process, which led to her asking to be let out.
Perry obliged, but then a couple of minutes later convinced her to come back to the car, only to then throw her to the ground, threaten to punch her and then drive off.
When Nickerson finally arrived home she was confronted by Perry, who ran after her, ripped an electric massage chair standing between them out of the wall and then proceeded to assault her.
“He had his knee on my belly and just ground-and-pounded me until he got tired,” Nickerson said. “I did a decent job of covering my face. I still had hematomas on the back of my head. My entire right side from my entire arm, my legs, my ribs, everything was covered in bruises the next few days. He just got all of his anger out on me, and on the last punch I clearly – I think that’s why he stopped, is we heard my rib crack. He knew and sat back, and I think he was just tired – tired of hitting me so much.”
After that Nickerson managed to flee to a neighbour’s house and then phoned Perry’s mother, who took her back to where she was staying, with Perry himself showing up in his car soon afterwards.
At that stage Perry’s mother decided to call the police, fearing that things were going to escalate even further.
“My son is out in the driveway, and he’s violent right now, and I’m scared for my life, and I don’t know what he’s going to do,” she said on a recorded 9-1-1 call. “He’s revving his engine right now. His wife is inside my house, and I’m afraid he’s going to hurt her.”
Thankfully Perry drove away just minutes later and unfortunately charges were never pressed, but Nickerson did leave Perry for good a few weeks later.
Nickerson has insisted that her intention is not to get Perry fired from the UFC, but rather to help other people who are struggling to deal with domestic violence, while she’s also urging the promotion to take more steps to monitor the mental and physical health of the fighters.
“This is not (something UFC president Dana White will see) and be like, ‘He’s cut.’ There’s no way. I don’t have that sort of impact. This is not for that. This is for helping others. This is for getting the word out there about what you can do to help people in a domestic violence situation and the warning signs and how to not get this deep into something. Hopefully this will be something that pushes the UFC into doing more checks on their heads and brain damage and really taking care of them physically.”
