Khalil Rountree’s father was murdered whilst managing Boyz II Men – now he is a UFC star fighting on Conor McGregor’s card

While the world of MMA is undoubtedly waiting for the return of Conor McGregor with bated breath, there are plenty of interesting fights and characters to watch out for at UFC 257.

Perhaps none more so than Khalil Rountree Jr, who faces Marcin Prachnio in the opening fight of the night at the Etihad Arena.

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Khalil Rountree Jr has overcome several hurdles in life just to get to the UFC

While the light heavyweight bout may not provide as much excitement as the main event or the co-main event, Rountree is perhaps lucky to even be in the UFC.

‘The Work Horse’ is not just a moniker for Rountree, who used to go to bed at 19 as a fast food and junk food addict and smoked two packs of cigarettes a day.

Even as a teenager who weighed 305lbs, he was not certain he would ever wake up at all.

“I was a complete mess,” Rountree told Yahoo Sports. “I didn’t eat vegetables at all.

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Rountree eventually made it to the UFC in 2016

“I would smoke two packs of cigarettes a day on top of gorging on fast food. Every day, I’d drink a litre or two of Dr. Pepper. I was doing nothing good for myself health wise.

“I felt I was going to die in my sleep. It’s really strange when you have a 19-year-old who believes he may never wake up once he goes to sleep, but that’s where I was.”

His spiral into bingeing on food and drink was not born out of indolence or pure gluttony – the murder of his father at the age of two undoubtedly played a huge part.

Roderick Rountree was the road manager for multi-Grammy award winning group Boyz II Men, who was tragically murdered in May 1992 after being shot multiple times in the head.

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Rountree Sr was murdered after being shot in the head whilst managing Boyz II Men

Although Khalil does not remember much of his father, the pain of losing a loved one undoubtedly had an effect on the introverted youngster.

However, when he began to watch ‘The Ultimate Fighter’, he convinced himself that was his purpose in life and set about changing his life.

“I used to travel around with bands and sell their merchandise on tour,” he told the BBC MMA Show. “I wasn’t really chasing my dream.

“I was just trying to help someone chase their own. I always thought I had more in me than just selling clothes and packing the van.”

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Rountree is now 8-4 and hopes to get another win under his belt on the UFC 257 prelims

He continues: “The way I got into fighting was that my brother was training in MMA, and he’d been wanting to introduce me to his new hobby, so I joined the gym with him because, at the time, I was 300 pounds.

“So I just joined the gym and found that I had a hidden love for fighting and a love for training and it just happened by accident – just because I wanted to lose a few pounds.”

Rountree is 8-4 in his MMA career and suffered a loss to Ion Cutelaba in his last outing back in September 2019.

Having narrowly made weight for UFC 257, ‘The Work Horse’ is ready and raring again to put on a show.