Mike Perry: Jacare Saved My Life When I Accidentally Hung Myself
Both Jacare Souza and Mike Perry will put their health on the line when they step into the Octagon to compete on the main card of tonight’s (Sat., April 27, 2019) UFC on ESPN+ 8 from the BB&T Center in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Souza will take on rising star Jack Hermansson while ‘Platinum’ meets Alex Oliveira. But Perry put his health on the line in a different way. He almost didn’t make it to the card due to a recent training mishap that he claims nearly took his life.
Last-Minute Save
Speaking in an interview with Andrew Whitelaw, Perry detailed a scene where he put himself in quite the bind while joking around with some workout equipment:
“Between me and Jacare, I love that dude. He is literally my hero, bro. Like, literally my hero. I was playing around. Alright, so there was this rubber band hanging from like, this pull-up bar. This rubber band is for workouts, it was a thick band. And we were about to do filming with the ESPN crew. I don’t know what I was thinking, right? I put my head in this thing and I was like, ‘I’m gonna do a neck workout and I’m gonna work on my ability to take a choke.
“So I lean forward and it wraps up my neck. And I flex myself so I could hold on. As soon as I lean forward it does it. Next thing I know, Allen Nugent from the UFC and Jacare Souza are like, Allen’s like slapping me, pouring water on me, shaking me. But they said that Jacare, while he was filming for ESPN, he was hitting a bag and he sees me.
“And Danielle (his wife) was right next to me and thought I was playing around, she’s like, ‘Mike, stop playing.’ I chipped my tooth so I grabbed this thing, and in two seconds I passed out. I swing and she hears a bang and then she looks up. And I hit my face on the metal bar of the pull-up bar and I’m passed out, I’m still hanging on this thing, I’m hanging myself.”
Jacare To The Rescue
Perry was apparently in legitimate trouble. But Jacare quickly came to his rescue, truly saving his life in Perry’s words:
“And Jacare seen it and he was over there quick and he pulls me out of this thing. Then they’re like waking me up and then I come to. And I’m like, ‘Oh man, this was a bad joke. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare everybody. So Jacare literally saved my life, man.”
Quite the save from one of the UFC’s most decorated submission artists. He’s normally seen putting people in an array of choke holds, but clearly, he’s almost just as good as saving people from chokes of a different kind.
