Morning Report: Mike Perry blasts Jackson Wink teammate Ray Borg for UFC Denver withdrawal: B*tch you scared!

This weekend Mike Perry will be taking on Donald Cerrone in the co-main event of UFC Denver. It’s a fight with more than just welterweight ranking implications, it also has bad blood behind it. Perry recently relocated to the Jackson Wink fight team, and his arrival in Albuquerque, N.M. has led to some pretty serious discord among the fight camp. And those troubles only appear to be growing.

Speaking yesterday with Aaron Bronsteter, Mike Perry took shots at fellow Jackson Wink fighter Ray Borg, who was supposed to take on Joseph Benavidez this weekend but was forced out of the fight with medical issues this week. Perry had no sympathy for his teammate, blasting him for being “scared,” not sick.

“He’s not fighting on this card? Aw man, that illness is, man . . .” Perry said. “He got caught, bro. He was talking s**t about Frank the Tank [JacksonWink striking coach Frank Lester] on his wife’s Instagram story in the background. We heard him talking. ‘I don’t like Frank the Tank. I don’t think he’s a good coach’ and this and that, and he don’t know nothing about Frank. He’s just a f*cking hater and that’s why his b*tch-ass ain’t showing up this week to f*cking fight like a man. Sick, you come down with illness. B*tch you scared!”

Jackson Wink is one of the premier fight teams in the sport but since Perry’s arrival, tensions have continued to mount and Perry’s arrival has been a catalyst for long-simmering frustrations to boil over. After Cerrone was offered an opportunity to step in against Perry on short notice, he requested Perry not be allowed to train at the gym he has spent almost his entire professional career competing for. That’s when he and striking coach Mike Winkeljohn got into it, with “Cowboy” blaming Winkeljohn for ruining the team and Winkeljohn calling Cowboy “narcissistic” and blaming him for dividing the team. Now, in this civil war, it appears that fighters are taking sides.

“He was there, he was training, he’s still there I guess,” Perry said of Borg. “The gym is very, there’s a lot people. As a fighter you may go to a gym but I have my plan on how I train, when I train, the times that I train, the people that I train with. . . So we don’t really see all the people all the time. I see Ray Borg a few times but then it’s been like he’s on Cowboy’s nuts and he was hating on Frank and sh*t and ever since he got caught hating on Frank, there’s been this fog in the air. And he don’t say sh*t. I don’t think I’ve ever said two words to Ray Borg.”

Like Perry, Borg is a relatively recent addition to the Jackson Wink team. He came over in 2016 after spending his first few years with Fit NHB, Jackson Wink’s crosstown rival. The change was good for Borg, who earned a title shot against Demetrious Johnson last year. Perry is hoping for a similar outcome but first he has to get past Cowboy, in Cowboy’s hometown. But Perry is more concerned with the fight being over too soon than he is with Cerrone.

“I hope it’s not too short of a show on Saturday,” Perry said at his open workout. “I hope he can take a few shots before he goes to sleep. We’ll see how bloody the fight is. Let’s make a war out of this.”