Athletes
Andre Fili Has Finally Found Peace
A Candid Conversation With The Featherweight Veteran About Life And Its Impact On Fighting
Last February in Seattle, Andre Fili teared up when asked about the impending arrival of his son, Valor, already tapping into the “nothing else matters, everything changes” mindset you’re told happens for most the second you become a parent.
“Being a dad, all the cliches are immediately true,” he said. “As soon as you become a dad, it changes your perspective on everything. You think you know — your friends who are dads will tell you, and you’re like, ‘I get it — I’ve got younger siblings. I got a dog that I love,’ but you don’t get it. You have no f***ing idea until you hold your son, and then you’re like, ‘Oh my god — I have to take over the world!’”
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Fili chuckled before continuing, amused by how true everything was so much greater than he could have imagined as he heads into his fight with Jose Miguel Delgado at UFC Fight Night: Emmett vs Vallejos.
“You have three thoughts immediately: ‘Thank you God for him being healthy and this blessing,’ followed by, ‘My wife is a superhero,’ and then, ‘Holy f***, I have to make a bunch of money!’ in that order. It’s such a crazy feeling, man… It opens you up in a weird way too. I’ve never cried so much in my life — stuff on Instagram or you see little things. Everything makes me cry now. Anything about parenting, anything about kids, it’s so, so crazy.”
When the 35-year-old featherweight first walked into Urijah Faber’s Ultimate Fitness in Sacramento, California, more than a dozen year ago, he was on probation. He’d endured a rocky upbringing, was a self-described angry kid, and got into his own fair share of trouble before finding mixed martial arts.
Fili started fighting, seeking the adoration that followed a win. He craved the love people poured into a victorious fighter, that feeling that you’re the man, the one who provided everyone in the arena with excitement and joy.
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“Some people go their whole lives and never get to feel that, so for me, I was chasing that feeling of winning a fight and then everything would be OK,” Fili said. “That’s the feeling after you win a fight: You get your hand raised and you’re walking out the Octagon, and that’s the only time in my life where I ever felt in my head I could go (big exhale) ‘OK, everything is gonna be alright. For right now, everything is gonna be OK.’
“Now I feel those things that I was chasing at the end of a fight, when I got a win, I feel those things every day. I wake up in the morning, I feel that; I know that everything’s gonna be OK. I wake up and the first thing I see are people that love me unconditionally… I’m a superhero to my son. He doesn’t know s*** about records or techniques or anything; he doesn’t give a s***. That’s my best friend. You don’t need to chase the love of strangers after you win a fight when you have people that love you unconditionally at home. When you’ve set your house in order and you can look yourself in the mirror and love and respect who you see, you don’t need to chase that 15 minutes of feeling everything is gonna be OK because I feel it every day.”
Before he fought in Seattle last year, the Federal Way-native posted a video on Instagram. A hardcore soundtrack played over stitched together highlights of his early days competing on the California regional circuit, including his win on a Tachi Palace Fights card where he was presented with his piano key belt.
The caption read, “If you see this kid, tell him I’m proud of him.”
Finding that contentment hasn’t changed Fili’s drive or ambition, but it has taken away the anxieties that surrounded each fight and each fight camp, allowing him to actually start trusting the process.
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“I still go through the grind and the sharpening of fight camp, I still have to cut the weight, but I know in my heart that everything is gonna be fine because I’ve created an incredible life for myself,” Fili said. “For the first time in my whole life — it’s like the old cliché about enjoying the process and trusting the process, I can finally do that,” Fili said. “My whole life I’ve been like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah — I’m gonna trust the process as long as I get what I want at the end. I’m enjoying the process, I’m trusting the process as long as everything goes exactly how I want!’
“Now I really am enjoying the process (laughs). This fight camp, I was already training — I’m always training — but I got the opponent six weeks out, and it’s flown by, dude. It feels like it was yesterday because I’ve just been so engaged in what I’m doing.”
His daily routine is as follows: breakfast with the family, six hours of training, back home to hang with his family, video games, bed. Rinse and repeat.
Some would reject the monotony, but Fili calls it “Groundhog’s Day, but in the best way.”
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“I’ve found exactly what I want to be doing, exactly what I need to be doing, and I do it every day, and this whole fight camp has flown by because I’m completely engaged in the process,” he said. “I am detached from the outcome in the most healthy and positive way. I’m being the best I can be every day, and so the result, the win that I am manifesting is just a natural result of the process.”
That last piece — detaching from the outcome — is one of the key elements of this sport and life in general.
For Fili, a big part of getting to that point was putting things into their proper context and not allowing his emotions to swing wildly based on the outcome but rather knowing that the sun will still rise the next day, and all you can do is the best you can in that moment.
“You can leave the cage feeling like a f***ing clown or you can leave the cage feeling like a hero, and it’s chaos,” he said. “People talk about it being human chess, and I think grappling is human chess, but striking is a lot more like poker where there is a lot of technique, but there is also a certain amount of inherent chaos that just — sometimes you get dealt a crazy f***ing hand, and sometimes there is stuff that happens that you’re not in control of and you have to play it the best you can… It’s like everything with growing up: when you’re a kid, everything feels like the end of the world because it’s your first time dealing with it. You get your heart broken? It feels like the end of the world. You lose a fight? It feels like the end of the world. You have some turmoil in the family, a death in the family? It feels like the end of the world, but it isn’t and life goes on. When you have enough ‘life goes on’ moments, you start going, ‘We’re fine. There is nothing that could happen to me that is actually the end of the world.’
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“Until I’m actually gone, and when that happens, I don’t have to worry about it; it’s not my f***ing problem anymore, you know?” he added, throwing his head back in laughter. “It’s somebody else’s problem to deal with, but it still won’t be the end of the world because they’ll be dealing with it… When you stop catastrophizing everything, stop making everything feel like the end of the world or the greatest thing that ever happened, you find some peace.”
Now that he cultivated peace in his life, Fili is aiming to find consistency in his professional career as well, something that has escaped him through his UFC tenure.
Fili has never won more than two consecutive fights inside the Octagon, but he’s never lost two straight either. His worst stretch was a three-fight run from 2020 to 2022 when losses to Bryce Mitchell and Joanderson Brito sandwiched a no contest result against Daniel Pineda, a fight he was cruising and looked sharp.
Just as he’s never shied away from discussing his emotions, Fili has never been opposed to discussing his win one, lose one pattern in the cage. The only difference is that now, everything flows through that “control the controllables” filter.
One fight that brings that thought process to the forefront is his bout with Dan Ige, which Fili lost via knockout in the first round.
“Getting caught by Dan is a good example of where I was really worried about getting caught by that right hand, and then I felt really good after I threw my first combination,” Fili recalled. “The next thing I remember is waking up in the medical tent going, ‘Something went wrong.’ It was in that order: ‘Don’t get hit by the right hand! Oh s***, I feel great,’ and then the next thing I remember is seeing Melissa walk in the medical tent and thinking, ‘Something didn’t go well.’”
Fili grabbed his chin and squinted his eyes, playfully reenacting trying to discern what happened between feeling great about his first combination and his wife meeting him backstage.
“(Dan) and I were talking (the other day) — he just had a tough one, and the fight didn’t go his way, but he prepared great, fought his a** off, and we were talking about how you can do everything right and (something out of your control happens). I told him, ‘You have such a good life. You’re so rich. You have a wife that is your biggest fan. You have two healthy, beautiful kids; you’re winning, man.’ That’s not something he doesn’t already know, but sometimes it’s good to remind your friends.
“But yeah, he and I were just having that conversation that you can do everything right, try to control every single bit of it, and something crazy can happen,” he added. “Or something amazing can happen! That’s a conversation I’ve been having with multiple people — Dan, Micah (Schnurstein) at the UFC PI, who is an incredible sports psychologist. I’ve had that talk with some really good people and that’s where I’m at: I’m gonna control what I can control… The only time things don’t work out for me is when I try to force them. I’ll gain traction and instead of letting the happen naturally, I start internalizing things, trying to force it, trying to prove this and that, (thinking), ‘I wanna be remembered and leave a legacy,’ and it’s just like, ‘No one is gonna remember anyone.’”
Once more, Fili laughed at the conclusion he’s reached in order to help settle himself and put things into perspective.
Once more, he’s not wrong.
Once more, he’s not wrong.
“Ask a Gen Z kid anything about Alexander the Great,” he said, shaking his head. “No one is gonna remember any of this, no matter how much you accomplish. We’re all dust in the wind, brother, but it doesn’t matter, because I got a son who loves me, and a wife who loves me, a beautiful home, and that’s all that matters.
“That re-focusing has been really good for me.”
If you see Andre Fili this week, tell him I’m proud of him and that much like he told Ige last week, “You’re winning, man.”
He already knows, but sometimes it’s good to remind your friends.
UFC Fight Night: Emmett vs Vallejos took place live from Meta APEX in Las Vegas, Nevada on March 14, 2026. See the final Prelim & Main Card Results, Official Scorecards and Who Won Bonuses - and relive the action on UFC FIGHT PASS!
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