“I’m not Khabib (Nurmagomedov), I won’t be 29-0, I get it,” Perrin said of the new UFC Hall of Famer. “I’m in the most stacked division in the world, in my opinion, so wins and losses come and go, but as long as you win more than you lose, you’re good.”
Perrin, 10-5 as a pro, has won twice as much as he has lost, and going into his Saturday fight against Aoriqileng he has had his hand raised in seven of his last nine fights. Not bad for a rising fighter who got the whole “undefeated” thing out of his head early on.
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“Once you’ve lost you know what it’s like and there’s no pressure to be undefeated,” he said. “And the greatest people of all time, minus Khabib obviously, lose. (Mike) Tyson lost, (Muhammad) Ali lost, Anderson Silva lost. They all took losses and came back and became legends in their own right. Once you’re defeated and lose that zero, a little comes off of it, depending on how big the streak is, but that’s something you don’t have to worry about. I lost my third professional fight, so I never really liked it like that.
The Lowell, Massachusetts native struggled early on. He was 3-3 after his first six and the idea of earning a spot on the UFC roster didn’t seem too realistic. But he kept going, put up a great run, and while a 2019 fight on Dana White’s Contender Series resulted in a decision loss to Dwight Joseph, two wins later, he got a short-notice call for face top prospect Mario Bautista in February and took him on. That fight ended in a decision loss, but he made an impression good enough to stick around. And that’s one of the positives ‘The Joker’ took away from his UFC debut.
