When Amir Sadollah burst onto the mixed martial arts scene earlier this year as a member of The Ultimate Fighter’s seventh season cast, it probably would have been a safe bet to say that he was going to be the first and last Brooklyn native from the medical field to enter the world of Spike TV’s reality series.
Then came Phillipe Nover.
Born and bred in Brooklyn, Nover has not only built a fighting career for himself, but he also served the community with his nursing work at Coney Island Hospital and Methodist Hospital. That’s a pretty eclectic choice of professions.
“It’s a good balance,” he chuckles. “It’s like a guy owning a window shop, and then you go out at night and break windows so they come back to you in the morning because they need more windows.”
Sadollah, a former surgical tech, left the medical field behind after winning season seven of TUF by submitting CB Dollaway in June. Nover, 2-0 on the series thus far, can earn a spot in the December 13th TUF8 finals with a win over George Roop on next Wednesday’s episode. The 24-year old has certainly seen the parallels between Sadollah and himself.
“Amir Sadollah’s a very skilled fighter, and I didn’t watch all the episodes, but he’s definitely someone that I looked up to before our show started,” he said. “Him winning the finale definitely got my hopes up.”
And the comparisons between the two go further than just their birthplaces and chosen professions.
Both Sadollah and Nover came to the show with little fanfare, and Nover even got some negative attention early in the first episode when he fell victim to the Las Vegas heat and fainted. By the end of that first show though, no one was laughing about Nover as he submitted highly-touted Joe Duarte in the second round.
And by the time he made short work of Dave Kaplan in the show’s quarterfinals, there was no question that “The Filipino Assassin” was the real deal. What made Nover’s first two wins even more impressive is that he – like Sadollah – did so without the backing of one of the sport’s major fight camps. And he likes it that way.
“I don’t come out of a big fight camp,” said Nover, 5-0-1 as a pro entering the show. “I come out of Brooklyn, New York, and no one ever heard of my team – Team Insight. We only have a few fighters, and it’s more of a family oriented team. We’re really tight, we rely on each other for a lot of things, and that’s the way our team functions. Maybe it’s different for most teams, but on our team, we’re really into quality rather than mass producing fighters that really don’t have the spirit like we do.”
No one represents that spirit better than Nover, a lifelong martial artist who began working under his current trainer – Ralph Mitchell – at the age of ten. By his teenage years, he was competing in full-contact stick fighting tournaments, but when the idea of competing in actual fights was brought up, his parents weren’t too happy about it.
“My mother and father really didn’t approve of it when I was underage,” admits Nover, but that didn’t stop him from sneaking out of the house one night when he was 17 to fight in his first amateur Muay Thai bout. He won a three round decision that night and even made it back in the house with no visible cuts or bruises. But you can’t fool mom.
“I came home and I wasn’t really bruised up, but she knew something was happening because all my friends were calling me and my brother came home all excited,” said Nover.
Eventually though, his parents relented and gave their blessing.
“They didn’t approve of it at first, but they saw that I had such a passion for it and they saw that I could succeed and that I didn’t do it half-assed,” he said. “They knew that I was there a hundred percent, and they had faith in me and let me do what I wanted to do.”
And now he’s in everyone’s living room every Wednesday night, fighting with 15 other competitors for the chance to win a UFC contract.
“Just to see myself on TV, especially on the first episode, was pretty crazy,” said Nover. “It was kind of an out of body experience. At my premiere party there were about 250 people there, and to see their reaction firsthand when I fought Joe Duarte was kinda weird, but I definitely enjoyed it and it was pretty exciting.”
What may be even more exciting for Nover is that as a fighter of Filipino descent, he is part of a heritage that has embraced combat sports in general, and mixed martial arts in particular with an unbridled enthusiasm. Hey, if Chuck Liddell can draw thousands to an open workout in the Philippines, just think what the reaction would be when a fighter of Filipino descent makes an appearance there.
“I was there about a year and a half, two years ago, and mixed martial arts was blowing up,” said Nover. “All my relatives knew I was involved in it and I told them I was gonna keep pursuing it, and hopefully I can blow up in the US and come back. Most of my younger cousins, the teenagers, they’re really excited and crazy about it, and I’ve been getting a lot of feedback from them.”
But fame and adulation are just side perks for Nover, and not the reason he wakes up in the morning to train. For him, fighting is a way of life, one that he won’t be giving up anytime soon.
“This stuff is addictive,” he said of fighting. “I love it, it’s a true test of an athlete, and it’s not just the best sport on Earth, it’s the original sport – just fighting, man on man.”
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