Photo by Angelo Carchesio
Phil “the Hitman” Caracappa talks ROC 75 victory, future
Video interview with Phil Caracappa above
Phil “the Hitman” Caracappa faced off against his toughest opponent to date at Ring of Combat 75 on Friday night, February 18th. James “the Alleycat” Gonzalez is the 145 lb ROC champion and decided to drop down to the bantamweight division and try to win another belt in a second division. Caracappa, despite not fighting at ROC since 2019, was still the reigning champion at 135-pounds and welcomed the challenge.
I was cageside on commentary for the fight streaming on FITE.TV, so nobody in the house had a better seat to see these two very talented, well trained mixed martial artists go head-to-head for the full 15 minutes. It was an epic battle in which Caracappa took home the gold. We caught up with “the Hitman” to get his feelings on his performance, and what may be next in his professional fighting career. He tells MyMMANews…
“Going into this fight, we all knew what James’s game-plan would be. He’s a next level jiu-jitsu practitioner and Dante (head coach Dante Rivera), said no kicks, but I just knew if a leg was there, I was going to kick it. That’s just me. I’m a purple belt and I roll with black belts all of the time, so I was not afraid of being taken down. I wanted everyone, including him, his fans, my team, my fans to know that if it goes to the ground, I can roll with the best of them. I wanted to showcase that I’m comfortable everywhere. And when he did take me down, I was able to reverse positions and scored with ground strikes and not be in much danger from any submissions.”
It was a vintage performance from Caracappa who did have a fight on Dana White’s The Contender Series in 2019 where he lost a split decision. Now he is back and continues his journey with hard work and also the role of becoming a leader at the gym where many younger fighters look up to him as “the general of the gym” he says.
Please check out our full video interview on the link above. It should be just a matter of when, not if, Caracappa gets his opportunity in the UFC. He is that good.
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