SBG’s Welsh fighter John Phillips will bring devastating KO power and big character when he faces off against Marcos Rogerio de Lima next week.
Ex-BAMMA world middleweight champion Phillips will be only the third Welshman to fight in the UFC, when he makes his promotional debut against Brazilian Rogerio de Lima in Denver, on the undercard of Shevchenko v Pena on Saturday, Jan 28.
A native of Swansea,Wales, Phillips has committed to training at Conor McGregor’s base in Dublin, Ireland [SBG]. The man who has earned the moniker “White Mike Tyson” due to his explosive knockout power boasts a current record reading 4 KO’s in his last 4 fights, with his last 3 ending in the first round.
Philips pragmatically forced the UFC to sign him, which culminated in Dana White and co adding the Welshman to their ranks at the end of last year. Phillips highlighted this impressive record to a video sent to the UFC in November, which also took shot at another Welsh fighter:
“22-5; 22 finishes; 20 first-round knockouts. Who’s got a record like that? I’m a Welsh wrecking f**king machine!”
https://twitter.com/JohnPhillipsmma/status/800806970437439488?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Phillips was vocal in his pursual of a fight with fellow Welshman Jack Marshman, in an effort to prove who Wales’ number-one middleweight. If Phillips is still keen for this fight to go ahead, chances that his intended target of UFC Fight Night London on March 18 does not seem likely to materialize, given the relatively short time from both fighters’ next fights (Marshman fights on February 19th in Halifax). A potential for a headline fight between the two in Cardiff, Wales would undoubtedly garner huge interest in Wales’ capital city:
“I watched Jack fight in Belfast versus Magnus. Come on. I’d blow the two of them out of the water. I’d hit them both into next week. Their heads would be up in the rafters – that’s a fact,” he continued.
“UFC, I’M the number one middleweight to come out of Wales. I’ve tried calling Jack out to be crowned number-one middleweight in Wales, and the fight has never happened – he’s been running scared.
The road to the UFC has not been easy for the 31 year old, who had to overcome adversity and self-doubt in order to secure his dream of fighting in MMA’s promised land. To put the man’s commitment into perspective, Phillips sleeps in a camper van outside the SBG Dublin gym. British broadcaster, BBC Sport recently documented the middleweight’s story in a short but insightful video.
“Sometimes I’d put myself in debt to do a camp and fight. I was like, why am I doing this? I didn’t know if the UFC were gonna come knocking. It was a massive unknown.”
Phillips also stated how boxing turned his life around as a youngster, and feels that the decision to take up the “sweet science” was hugely important to who is today. When asked if boxing ‘saved him’ an emotional Phillips told the BBC:
“Every time I think about the boxing, and what it did for me; it’s made me who I am today, and give me everything I got. Without that boxing, without going into that gym that day I would never be here today. It turned my life around: I would have ended up a druggie, or some smack head…a thief or something like that. I probably would have ended up dead”.
