Paul Felder became a UFC commentator thanks to his UArts acting training. Now, the school has closed.

Paul Felder might be the University of the Arts’ most unconventional alumnus.

A 2008 graduate who studied acting, Felder spent a decade as a professional mixed martial-arts fighter, more than half of it in the UFC.

“When I tell people what I went to school for, especially in the world that I’m in now, they’re like, ‘How did that happen?’” Felder, who was born in Philadelphia, told The Inquirer. “‘How did you go from a performing arts college to punching people in the face professionally?’”

But now, Felder, who retired from fighting in 2021, is using his theater training in more unexpected ways — as a commentator on telecasts for Ultimate Fighting Championship. And now, the alma mater that helped prepare him is suddenly gone. The school announced May 31 that it was closing, and it laid off more than 600 employees on Friday.

From a young age, Felder loved action and martial-arts movies, inspiring him to train. But at Ridley High School, he fell in love with theater and began to act in school plays. Felder started at Delaware County Community College before ultimately auditioning for and enrolling at UArts as an acting major after visiting a friend who attended.

“I probably never would have went to college if it wasn’t for some place like the University of the Arts, where I could be more specific in acting and doing something that I really wanted to go to school for,” Felder said.

During his time at UArts, Felder also taught karate on the weekends and trained with a small group of friends he made, some he’s still close with. After graduation, Felder’s UArts connections and training helped him book roles in plays in Philadelphia, before his fighting career ultimately took off.

MMA isn’t the traditional pathway for someone with a theater background, and aside from a guest appearance on notable TV shows It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and, more recently, in a recurring role on the HBO Max series Hacks, Felder wasn’t acting much, instead cultivating a 17-6 record during his time as a professional fighter.

But as Felder’s fight career wound down, a new opportunity emerged. Felder auditioned to be a commentator on the telecasts for Dana White’s Contender Series, a UFC promotion where athletes compete in hopes of gaining UFC contracts. His acting background set him apart, and he secured a full-time role starting in 2017.

“I crushed it because I was just ready to do the stand up with the microphone on the fly, talk about a fight, answer questions, have points, and be comfortable on camera when the red light turned on. And that all stemmed from just being an actor and having gone through that,” Felder said.

“I probably would not be a color commentator,” he said of his prospects before attending UArts. “I may very well have become a professional fighter based on my background as a kid and love for martial arts. But I don’t think I would have gotten into the position I’m at now with a full-time job post-fighting career if it wasn’t for UArts.”

At UArts, Felder trained in the Meisner technique, which focuses on improvisation and emotional responses to given circumstances. He said his acting teacher, Ernie Losso, had a massive influence on him, teaching him to listen and respond, not just wait for his turn to talk and speak his lines — a skill that has served him well in live commentary, where he’s constantly listening and responding live.

“Probably the reason I got the job in the first place was because of the UArts background and because of having gone to school and being so comfortable on the fly,” Felder said. “Especially for me — I didn’t do film, I did theater. It was always in the moment, then and there, go with the flow just like live television. There’s no script for when we call these fights. There’s no script for when we do the desk and analyze all these things.

“It’s life. If something goes wrong, you gotta flow with it, and that was something that I was good at because of school, because of training.”

Felder, like many UArts students, alumni, and professors, learned about the university’s closing from The Inquirer, an action he called “unprofessional” and “really frustrating.”

“I don’t have an alma mater,” Felder said. “I don’t have a school anymore.”

In his early career, Felder booked multiple gigs in the city through a guest director he worked with at UArts. Local professional companies came to university productions to look for talent, and without such a school in the area, Felder worries for the long-term impact on both potential students and the region’s theaters.

“The theater community in Philly suffered bad enough coming out of the pandemic and 2020 and all that, just live theater in general, live everything in general probably, just dwindled to almost nothing for a while,” Felder said.

“On top of that, now you’ve got — obviously you would get a lot of people that would stay around for a while even if they moved on to another city. You would get kids sticking around for a while, cutting their teeth in Philly, and now the theater scene’s not going to have that. You’re going to have less people in the city in general that are trying to even be performers for live theater because they’re going to art schools elsewhere.

“It’s a shame. It sucks.”