Asian Journal- The Filipino-American Community Newspaper

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.

"A lot of people say it doesn’t make any sense to them," said Nover to The Asian Journal. "For me it makes so much sense. I have a perfect balance of two totally opposite philosophies—how to heal someone and how to hurt someone."

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.

"When I came home, my mom was like ‘I know what you did,’" Nover recalls. "[I told her] ‘I’m sorry. This is what I love to do’…She had to accept it. The biggest thing is she doesn’t want me getting hurt and she also doesn’t want me to hurt anyone but it’s part of the game."

Most importantly, his mother wanted him to pursue an education.

"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.

"But I said to myself ‘why can’t I do both?’" said Nover.

"That was the deal," he added between him and his parents. "When I got my degree as a nurse, especially because my mom wanted me to finish school, she really had to accept [my life as a fighter]. For anybody that reads this, my advice to anyone is you can finish school first and pursue your dreams at the same time…you don’t have to put education on the side."