His 23-year-old daughter Keisha — a rose tattoo on her neck, the sharpest thorns of her life now in the past — wore her dad’s stubborn temperament on her sleeve.
And his ex-wife, Dee, who once bounced a baby bottle off his opponent as she sat ringside at their fight, paced around the room, unable to light or calm down.
“We’re all losing our minds and don’t know what to do,” Whitney said. “We thought of him as the strongest man in the world … and now he’s gone.”
Rocky Phillips, the roustabout tough guy with the bulldog build and the knockout punch, one of the more enigmatic sports figures Dayton has known, died Wednesday afternoon in the room of a Miamisburg hotel where he lived with his 12-year-old daughter, Selena, and his new wife.
He was 50.
The cause of death has not been released, but Whitney said the initial report was that an untreated staph infection — her dad refused to go to the doctor, she said — had gotten into his blood and heart. His funeral will be Monday at the George C. Martin Funeral Home, 5040 Frederick Pike. Viewing will be from 1-2 p.m. and services will follow.
“You know how it’s been storming and lightning outside? How the whole sky has been lighting up?” Dee asked. “That’s Rocky in the sky. That’s him saying goodbye.”
She figured he was leaving life the way he had lived it.
A couple of decades ago, Phillips was a legendary boxing figure in small fight clubs around Kentucky and Ohio. He started his heavyweight career 11-0 with 10 knockouts. Later, he was 20-3 and in October 1997 he didn’t just knock out Michael Dokes, the out-of-shape former heavyweight champ, he broke his jaw with a vicious left hook.
“The guy could absolutely punch,” fabled fight promoter Don Elbaum said from New York City. “For one or two rounds, he was one of the great punchers in boxing, period. If he’d hit Klitschko (heavyweight champ Wladimir Klitschko) he’d knock him out. He could knock anybody out.”
But the flip side came in the latter stages of his career when he lost 11 of his last 12 bouts, including a few short-notice fights in Europe against unbeaten, rising stars.
Now, at age 50, he was still trying to line up one last score in boxing.
“He wanted to fight George Foreman’s son,” Keisha said.
Outside the ring, he had been even better known as muscle for hire, working as a bodyguard for celebrities and a bouncer for clubs.
“He was so humble, so laid back, “ Keisha said. “People would get all crazy in front of him, but then … they didn’t know how crazy he could get.”
Several years ago two Cincinnati Bengals found that out at the Waterfront restaurant where they were harassing women. Rocky was called in, and when a beefy running back took a swing, Rocky said he planted a left hook into his kidney, then sent an uppercut roaring into his chin and the guy dropped “colder than kraut.”
Yet, it might surprise you that “he didn’t cuss, smoke or drink,” Whitney said.
“He was a loving father,” said Cincinnati heavyweight Nate Tubbs. “He really loved his kids.”
Phillips has six daughters, ages 28 to 12, and now a 3-year-old boy. Although he and Dee were divorced, they still had a son together. There are five grandkids, too.
“He had all his girls’ names tattooed on his left arm,” said Whitney. “He loved us and we loved him.”
The other side of macho also showed at Holy Angels Church. Rocky was a devout Catholic. He went to Mass, sometimes served as an usher, delivered food to elderly parishioners and prayed daily at the Sacred Heart statue that stands in a lighted alcove next to the church.
“When I was younger, I’d go with him when he went to the statue every night,” Whitney said. “He’d get Selena and me Wendy’s and we’d stay in the truck. He’d say, ‘I’ll try to make it quick, girls, but it never was. It could be pouring rain or snowing, it didn’t matter. Sometimes he came back frosted.”
Keisha nodded: “He wouldn’t leave ‘til he felt at peace with God.”
As the tears again welled up, Whitney searched for an explanation: “He was like one of God’s warrior angels. There wasn’t anybody like him.”
Add to that mix a chutzpah and charm and you can see why he could also develop a connection to an unlikely set of people, everyone from Sylvester Stallone, Pete Rose and Elbaum to actor (HBO’s Oz, FX’s Sons of Anarchy) and former Hell’s Angels’ hierarchy, Chuck Zito.
He and Zito had been friends for over a dozen years.
Zito called late Friday during a break while filming in California. He talked about his times with Rocky in Hollywood, with Joe Frazier in Philadelphia, at his mom’s birthday party in NYC and especially their annual dinner — celebrating Zito’s birthday — at the Arnold Classic in Columbus:
“This last March he and his young daughter came over. We all got together — Jason Stathan, Kurt Angle and some other friends — and Rocky gave me a solid gold St. Christopher’s medal. It’s hanging on the rear-view mirror of my car.
“He was a sweetheart of a guy, a guy with a big, big heart. I loved him. My friends and family did, too.”
Rough early life
Phillips grew up in rural Pike County in southern Ohio.
“I had it real tough as a kid,” he once told me. “My sister, two brothers and me went through hell. My dad went to prison for 12 1/2 years for shooting a guy who was trying to pick up Mom in a bar. After that, my mom had problems and we were in and out of foster homes.
“Some of the homes we were in were terrible. We’d get beat, we didn’t have enough food. I remember we used to get our shoes from a drop box and I was always afraid of going to school and meeting one of the kids my shoes used to belong to. I was looked down upon ‘cause I was real poor, because our place didn’t have running water or an indoor toilet.”
Sports became his salvation. Former Eastern High School basketball coach Don Cantrell once told me how Rocky, a sophomore guard then known as Paul, his birth name, helped the school win its first district title.
As a teenager, Phillips was enamored of the Rocky movies and made his own heavy bag — a pillowcase filled with sawdust — that he hung from a tree and then pummeled day and night.
At 18 he took a Greyhound to Hollywood, found the gym where Stallone worked out and introduced himself. Photos of that encounter, including side-by-side muscle poses by the cinematic Rocky and the Dayton Rocky, used to be on display at Joe Kiss’s Old Hickory Bar-B-Q on Brown Street.
Once he returned to Covington, Ky., Phillips hooked up with fight trainer Terry O’Brien and launched his pro career in 1987. Although the Dokes fight was the highlight, it didn’t serve as a springboard because two days after the bout he went away to prison to serve a three-year drug possession sentence (reduced to less than one year) because he was in a car that was pulled over whole hauling 80 pounds of pot.
Once back home, he tried re-starting his career but struggled as he watched family and friends beset by problems and tragedy. A brother-in-law was shot and killed, a longtime friend went to prison, as did Keisha for her involvement in a robbery.
Even as his health failed of late, Rocky tried to hold onto some of that dukes-up image of the past.
“To his kids he’s always been Superman and the Incredible Hulk all rolled into one,” Dee said. “That’s why no one can believe he’s gone.”
‘Hell of a punch’
Rocky’s death has been on the minds of some in the fistic crowd at the Original East Dayton Boxing gym the past couple of nights.
“I’d see him at Bob Evans having breakfast and he’d say he was gonna come over and train with us,” said Brandon Wigginton, the 29-year-old gym owner. “I remember the old fight posters I saw of him. They called him a ‘Knockout Artist.’ “
Veteran trainer Ron Daniels had instructed Phillips on how to tighten up his hook: “We’d work at the old Salvation Army Gym downtown and when I held the pads for him, he hit hard, oh man.”
Tubbs agreed: “He had a hell of a punch. If nothing else, if he did hit you he was gonna knock you out.”
Dokes found that out.
Barberton heavyweight George Linberger managed to avoid that fate. He and Rocky met in 2004 for the WBE International Super Heavyweight Title in Akron. Elbaum, who promoted that show, predicted the fight wouldn’t go three rounds.
He was right.
“Rocky was a strong bull,” Linberger remembered Thursday night. “He threw some bombs right away that missed hitting me clean and I remember thinking, ‘Man, I’m glad I didn’t get hit by that one.’
“Then my shoe came untied. The ref sent me back to the corner and my trainer tied it up for me. When I turned back, Rocky was right there charging at me. I let the right hand go — it was probably the best right hand I ever threw in my life — and he walked into it. It knocked him out cold. I just happened to clip him before he clipped me.
“Boxing aside, though, I actually liked the guy. Like everybody, I send my condolences to the family and I just want them to know they had quite a guy there.”
They know.
“He had a big punch and an even bigger heart,” said Keisha. “He was our champion.”
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