It’s fair to say that Brazilian fighter Paulo Filho hasn’t had his troubles to seek over the years having battled drug addiction, mental problems and financial issues, and apparently he’s still continuing to fight his demons as he prepares to makes his debut at World Series Of Fighting 2 this weekend.
Filho is expected to fight David Branch on the main card of the show in Atlantic City, but according to reports emerging today he suffered a panic attack before boarding the plane to the U.S from Brazil which caused him to miss the flight.
At that stage WSOF officials were close to pulling the plug on the fight, but Filho has since managed to get himself on another flight so at this stage the fight is tentatively still being declared as going ahead.
If it does go ahead this will be the first time that Filho has fought on U.S soil since an infamous fight with Chael Sonnen in the WEC organization in 2008.
On that occasion Filho was supposed to be defending his middleweight title, but failed to make weight and then was behaving strangely in the cage, eventually losing by decision to Sonnen – his first ever defeat in 17 professional fights.
Bellator did try to bring Filho back to the U.S in 2010, but that backfired when Filho ran into visa issues.
In 2011 Filho announced his retirement, citing his continued battle with drug addiction for doing so, but he returned last year with a win over Murilo ‘Ninja’ Rua in Brazil and at the age of 34 a win on Saturday night could have put him back on the map.
Perhaps that will still be the case, but the alarm bells are now ringing that this could end up being another unfortunate chapter in Filho’s turbulent career.
