Nobody likes doing a nine-to-five. But it pays the bills, so… Unfortunately, that is the reality for most of the world. But every now and then, there comes some guy with a day job who stops listening to his better angels and pursues excellence. This retired UFC fighter is one of those guys.
MMA doesn’t pay well, even at the summit of the sport, so one can only imagine how unsustainable it is at a grassroots level. This is why former lightweight fighter Paul Felder, who was also an aspiring actor at the time, worked a job he hated.
He was a bartender, working odd hours, late into the night, dealing with an unsociable freaks of nature, with little regard for blue-collar/gig workers.
So, one night he decided, “f*ck this I don’t wanna work here. I was doing everything I could to get fired from this place.” So, what exactly did he do to get the job done?
“I had spilled a whole gallon of milk at one point. And I tried to walk out. And the manager was like, ‘No no, please, please, you have got to stay‘”, he began.
Chronicling the fateful day further, Felder added, “By the end of the night, I was just pouring myself drinks behind the bar in front of everybody and just drinking drinks and making them for anybody that wanted them.”
At this point, his boss had had enough of him and appeared in front of the bar to Felder, asking her, “Am I fired?” Almost without hesitation, she responded, “You are fired.”
Felder screamed ‘THANK YOU’ and walked out of that place.
The fighter-turned-UFC commentator then told Michael Bisping that he was a terrible employee till he started training and fighting. But fighting wasn’t the only thing keeping him straight.
“Whenever I had an acting job when I was younger, ‘no problem.’ Worked my a** off. Loved every second. Gotta do a regular job? I am just not good, man!” he added to Bisping’s amusement.
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Notably, Felder found tremendous success in his next venture after the bartending job. Fighting under the Cage Fury Fighting Championships (CFFC) banner from 2011-14, he became their lightweight champion.
Although he couldn’t replicate his success in the Dana White led UFC, Felder did manage to secure some impressive wins over the likes of Charles Oliveira and Edson Barboza before finally hanging up his gloves out of concern for his long-term health.
Felder lost a piece of his lung while fighting
The former UFC fighter dished out a lot of damage in his career as a fighter, with 10 KO victories to his name. However, he has also sustained a lot of damage himself, from his bloody fight with Mike Perry at UFC 226 to his fight against James Vick at UFC on ESPN: Ngannou vs. Velasquez in 2019.
Last October, Felder appeared on a podcast episode with his fellow commentator Joe Rogan and revealed the extent of the damage he received from the Vick fight, the consequences of which he continues to bear even in retirement.
“I lost a piece of my lung in the James Vick fight…At the end of the fight he knees me and it pushed in my ribcage”, he revealed.
Vick’s kick landed on something called a ‘bleb’, a bubble that naturally forms on the lungs. The kick burst that bubble and ended up puncturing his lung.
“Surgeons came in and they were like we’re gonna have to go in, find where the bleb was, cut it out, staple your lung shut, and then adhere your lung to your chest wall. So my left lung is attached to my inside of my chest wall”, he told Rogan.
Talk about giving a piece of yourself to the sport!
