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#2 UFC Welterweight Division: Mike Perry vs. Mickey Gall

Mike Perry will be looking to score a big knockout this weekend over Mickey Gall

Usually you’d expect a fight like this to have plenty of build in terms of trash talk, but both Perry and Gall have been relatively quiet during the past couple of weeks. Perhaps, because this whole show feels like it’s been thrown together by the UFC on late notice.

The fight is, in essence, a classic striker vs. grappler clash. Sure, Perry has a decent wrestling background and sure, Gall has been working hard on his kickboxing since his 2016 debut at UFC Fight Night 82, but both fighters would probably be silly to attempt to go after the other in their own realm.

It’s for that reason that I’m leaning firmly towards Perry taking the win here. Outside of anything else, the experience levels of the two men are absolutely poles apart.

Perry started fighting professionally about a year before Gall, but over time he’s had 19 fights, 11 more than Gall. Gall’s experience has come almost purely in the UFC. He was brought in at 1-0 to be set up as CM Punk’s first opponent at UFC 203, but he essentially remains what he was upon his debut.

He’s less raw than back then, but he’s still an excellent grappler with an eye for a finish, largely through some kind of choke. In fact, his most recent decision win over Salim Touahri at UFC on ESPN 5 was the first time he’d ever won a fight by anything but a rear naked choke.

At 6’2”, Gall is a tall, lanky Welterweight who possesses a long reach at 74”. However, on the feet he’s shown no real abilities to fight behind a jab or anything like that. He knocked Michael Jackson down with wild punches in his UFC debut and is a willing striker, as we saw against Sage Northcutt. But in reality everything he does is designed to set up his ground game.

Perry on the other hand is one of the most concussive punchers in the division. He’s been compared to former UFC star Phil Baroni on more than one occasion due to his heavy hands and outspoken style. But where ‘The New York Bad Ass’ was almost purely a boxer with some wrestling, ‘Platinum’ is more well-rounded.

Sure, he throws his punches with the same brute force as Baroni did, but the native of Florida also uses powerful leg kicks, elbows and knees from the clinch, and his cardio is also better than Baroni’s ever was. He is a brawler at heart, but we’ve also seen flashes of his more technical side, particularly during his wins over Paul Felder at UFC 226 and Alex Oliveira at UFC Fight Night 150.

To win this one, Gall is going to have to get Perry down extremely early, and get a dominant position to finish him off. I don’t think his cardio is good enough to outgrapple ‘Platinum’ for three rounds. Nor do I think he can afford to stand with him for too long, as despite owning a reach advantage, his defense just isn’t good enough to prevent Perry from landing something big.

With all that in mind, I think Perry will shrug off some early takedown attempts before landing one of his trademark bombs later in the first round to seal the deal.

The Pick: Perry via first round KO