Phil De Fries is the world’s most dominant MMA champion today.
The KSW heavyweight titleholder looks to extend his reign Saturday as he goes for his 12th straight championship defense when he takes on undefeated Arkadiusz Wrzosek at KSW 107 in Poland. And all of this was made possible by therapy and medication.
The same Englishman who couldn’t keep a positive record in the UFC more than a decade ago went on to become a finishing machine, and he’s now proud to look in the rear-view mirror and see the tortuous road he had to navigate.
“When I fought in the UFC I was kind of walking the green mile every fight,” De Fries told MMA Fighting. “I was terrified. I thought I’m gonna get beat, and I wasn’t very good because of it, because I always second guessed myself.”
De Fries became a professional MMA fighter in 2009 and in less than two years he was called to join the UFC. The 7-0 youngster, then just 25 years old, walked out in front of the Birmingham crowd to win a decision over Rob Broughton in his debut at UFC 138, but lost in just 43 seconds to future champion Stipe Miocic shortly after. He beat fellow English heavyweight Oli Thompson months later before suffering back-to-back knockouts to Todd Duffee and Matt Mitrione that put an end to his UFC career.
What followed was De Fries booking fights wherever he could in the hunt for money and opportunity. In 2015, Thomas Denham, a journeyman with a 5-6 record, defeated him by knockout, leaving De Fries in disbelief. He was dealing with all sorts of issues outside the cage and it all got worse from there.
“I didn’t even know anxiety was a condition,” De Fries said. “I didn’t know I had a condition because through my not-so-nice upbringing, I always had anxiety and I didn’t know I had anything wrong with me. I was just so anxious. After I got kicked out of the UFC, I became kind of an alcoholic. I probably did, like, at the festival scenes, I was into the drugs and things, and I was just starting getting really bad.
“I was getting so anxious, I couldn’t leave the house. I would, like, leave the house, check the door was locked, or then I walk five steps and [think], ‘Did I lock the door? Did the gas turn off?’ I ended up getting a camera installed in my bedroom so I could look at my dog when I was at work. I was worried about people stealing my dog. And people were like, ‘Phil, this is not normal behavior. You’re insane.’ I Googled ‘irrational fear of everything’ and it said anxiety, and I was like, ‘I’ve heard of anxiety.’ And I read the symptoms and I thought, ‘You’ve got anxiety, you’ve had anxiety your whole life.’”
De Fries admits he reached a point where he thought he would never be able to fight again.
Worse, that there was no point living anymore.
“I was quite depressed as well, you know? I used to think about killing myself quite a lot,” De Fries said. “I used to think, ‘Should I have killed myself? Is it better than just being scared all the time?’ But then I would drink, get drunk, and the anxiety would go away for a little bit. But the next the next day it’d be twice as worse. I was really, really, really quite bad. I could have killed myself. I was in a very, very dark place for long time.”
“After I got beaten in the local scene by like a journeyman sort of thing, [a fight] I should have won and I fought terribly, I got knocked out, I kind of quit for a year,” he continued. “That’s when I really started drinking a lot. But there’s been like two or three times in my career where I went, ‘If I lose this fight, I’m done.’ And it’s always worked out for us, you know? And now I’m on the trajectory and it’s changed my life. I’m earning well, I’m having great big fights in big stadiums. It’s so easily could have been the other way, and I could have just give up and went back to work. I had my bad luck when I was younger with my upbringing, but I feel like I’ve got a better luck now.”
The heavyweight credits therapy and medication for his recovery, allowing him to “enjoy walking into a huge stadium, 15,000 people there, slapping their hands” to watch him fight another human being inside the locked cage. De Fries said he hasn’t lost a fight since he got the prescription from a doctor, and admits he’s afraid to let go of the pills.
“The doctor wants me to come off medication but I’m so much happier, my income is times by 10, I’m world champion,” De Fries said. “I’m gonna get my career done, do four more years maybe, retire, then maybe try and come off the medication. I tried to come off it before but all of a sudden, boom, came back and got me. I am quite scared to come off the medication just yet. But I know it’s something I want to beat one day, you know? So after the fighting’s done and I don’t have to fight people anymore, my life will be less stressful. I will come off it eventually.”
“I don’t even know why I fought people. It was horrible,” he continued. “I didn’t like the training. The fights were terrifying. but for some reason I thought I always wanted to be a fighter. But now I’ve got the anxiety disorder under control I enjoy the life. It’s great. Sparring is good. I’m smiling in the gym. I’m smiling when I walk the cage. It’s still scary, but I try and enjoy it as best I can. But I’m quite glad I had those days because I think it’s a little bit scary still, but like 10 times better than what it used to be, you know?”
De Fries knocked out Michal Andryszak to win the vacant KSW title in April 2018, his debut in the organization, and has since beaten 11 men in a row all over Europe. The list includes UFC veterans like Duffee, Darko Stosic and Augusto Sakai, and an incredible run of eight finishes in 11 title defenses.
Wrzosek, his opponent in the main event of KSW 107 in Gdansk, is a local veteran with 6-0 record in MMA and extensive kickboxing career, capped off by a knockout win over the legendary Badr Hari in GLORY. De Fries doesn’t expect to out-strike Wrzosek, and wonders how ready he is for this level of competition when all martial arts are combined.
“He hasn’t been checked on the ground yet and I think I’m the guy to check him,” De Fries said with a laugh. “I haven’t got better striking than him, but I can fight MMA better than him. You can fake a takedown and then can land shots off the takedown. Look like [Kamaru] Usman beat [Jorge] Masvidal, Johny Hendricks knocked out loads of strikers. They have to respect the shot so much that they have let their hands down so you can sometimes get them. So a knockout is possible for me, but I will be taking it to the ground the first instance I get.
“It’s hard to say [how good his grappling is], nobody’s seen him on the floor. I don’t know what he’s like, but the best grapplers in the world can’t hang with me on the floor in MMA. If I get on top of you, it doesn’t matter who you are, you’re having a really bad time [laughs].”
