Strip inside of wrapper

Im not sure what to look for to try to achieve this but I was trying to do a str_replace to all the  tags and replace them with   and it worked but then I releaized I need to wrap the content with 

this is the code i used

<?php
      $nodecontent = render($content);
      $newcontent = preg_replace("/<p[^>]*?>/", "", $nodecontent);
      $newcontent = str_replace("</p>", "<br /><br />", $newcontent);
  print render($newcontent);
?>

this is what my my content had before

  <div property="content:encoded" class="field-item even">
<p>SOME TExT HERE and here and Here..<p>SOME TExT HERE</p> and here and <p>Here..SOME TExT HERE and here and Here..</p>
</p>
</div>

then after I put the code in it looks like this so it did work to some degree but stripped the  tag

    <div property="content:encoded" class="field-item even">
SOME TExT HERE and here and Here..<br/><br/>SOME TExT HERE<br/><br/> and here and <br/><br/>Here..SOME TExT HERE and here and Here..<br/><br/>
</div>

but i want it to look like this without stripping the  tag as a wrapper

   <div property="content:encoded" class="field-item even"><p>
        SOME TExT HERE and here and Here..<br/><br/>SOME TExT HERE<br/><br/> and here and <br/><br/>Here..SOME TExT HERE and here and Here..<br/><br/>
        </p></div>

Solution

between jquery and php i figured this out, not thanks to the others who criticized me and down voted me.

    <script type="text/javascript" >
    jQuery(document).ready(function() {
        jQuery(".field-item").wrapInner('<p></p>')
    });
    </script>

    <?php $nodecontent = render($content);
      $newcontent = preg_replace("/<p[^>]*?>/", "", $nodecontent);
      $newcontent = str_replace("</p>", "<br /><br />", $newcontent);

 print render($newcontent); ?>

Strip <p> inside of <p> wrapper