Philippe Nover - RN and UFC Fighter

Posted by admin on December 2, 2008

FIL-AM Philippe Nover is a walking contradiction.

During the day he works as a registered nurse at a New York hospital emergency room healing and taking care of the sick and wounded, but at night he moonlights as a professional mixed martial arts fighter, pummeling and beating people to submission. Nover is a contestant in this seasons The Ultimate Fighter (TUF), a reality based contest on the Spike network that pits professional mixed martial artists (MMA) around the world a chance for a $100,000 contract to join the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) organization. The 24-year-old, 155-pound Brooklyn native has already won two of his preliminary lightweight division fights on the show. Most recently, in episode eight of the reality show, Nover planted a rear naked choke hold that made highly regarded MMA fighter Dave Kaplan submit before proclaiming himself as the “toughest RN in the world.”

Nover sports an undefeated 5-0-1 professional MMA record. After the win against Kaplan, UFC President Dana White hailed Nover as the next [UFC Middleweight Champion] George St. Pierre, indicative of Nover’s tenacious fighting style. If it still doesn’t make sense how a man can be a practicing nurse at the same time as he beats people up for a living, Nover explains his incongruous life. He is the son of a Filipina mom from Manila and a Polish father from New York. He grew up in Brooklyn, a place where he admits is not the safest area in the world. Nover said his mother advocated for him to learn self-defense tactics. He took up karate and tae kwon do starting at the age of five. By the age of nine, he started training with Ralph Mitchell, a renowned instructor at the Universal Defense System. He continued his training by participating in a number of karate tournaments, but when it came time to step inside the ring, his parents disapproved. When Nover was 16, he snuck out of his home to participate in his first kickboxing match at a Russian nightclub.

“They told me I can pursue anything that I want as long as I have an education,” he said. “I followed my dad’s footsteps into nursing, and I thought it was the best thing to do. All my Filipino friends were getting into nursing so I was like why not? It’s a great profession, it’s a wholesome profession, and it’s also a selfless profession because you’re really helping other people. You definitely get a good feeling from it. Coming home from a day’s work you know you really did your best to help someone.”

Nover loved the study of nursing so much that at one point he thought about quitting his life as a professional fighter to become a full time RN.
The dual life is working out pretty well for Nover. He splits his time working as a nurse and trains for fights during his time off. He said at first he was going to work as a nurse full time and focus on “one or two fights a year” but since he was chosen as one of the contestants in this season’s TUF show, Nover’s been “full-time fighter, part time nurse. Nover knows that winning the reality-based contest is his ticket to living out his dream. The TUF show has been a stepping stone for many current UFC fighters. But first he not only has to survive on a weekly basis against fighters from around the world vying for a chance to join the UFC, he also has to put up with living in a maniacal frat house setting with those same fighters and having cameras document their every movement. Nover also said that he wants people to know how fierce and good Filipinos are when it comes to fighting. He wants to be recognized in the same breathe as boxing champion Manny Pacquiao, boxers Nonito Donaire Jr. and Brian Viloria, and UFC fighter Brandon Vera.

“You know, I have it in my blood and I think every Filipino has that warrior spirit in their blood,” he said. “If you look at the history of the Philippines…the whole culture is a war like culture. There’s so much history that you can really get in to that warrior mentality. And I, personally, am into that war like mentality. To have the Philippines backing me as a fighter is really important. I want to show the world that as a Filipino, I’m a special breed of person. Filipinos are sportsman, athletic, intelligent and we’re professional people, I want to show the world that.

“And that I’m proud to have Filipino blood in me.”