By The escalating war of words between UFC welterweights Michel Pereira and Jorge Masvidal over direct messages between Masvidal and Pereira’s wife, Gina Amir Atelier, on the popular social media app Instagram seems like a totally normal disagreement between two men with positively no problematic views about women and their value outside of a male gaze context. Pereira, who started the news cycle by referencing what he deemed to be an inappropriate emoji sent by Masvidal, saw the story turn on him as Masvidal released screenshots of his direct messages with Atelier, showing in an innocuous wish of good luck to a training story after the announcement of Masvidal’s second UFC title fight, as well as prayer hands response from the fighter. This is of course a completely reasonable thing for a man to create an entire feud in his head to be mad about.
Framing the screenshot used in his rebuttal, Masvidal was also being really rad by calling the single story tag and one story response over the last several years as “sliding into his DMs” so that the dope MMA media’s headlines could imply all of the relevant associations that provides. The release triggered a response from Atelier, and it’s very normal and in no-way a red flag that their relationship is one where she would feel compelled to issue a stern denial over the extremely-mundane messages. Fans are eagerly awaiting the potential for the UFC to make this fight, providing the opportunity for several more months of these extremely awesome actions which help to make the MMA community the safe and inclusive space it is today!
