Strip entire html link (including text) with PHP

I have a collection of text that I am trying to process with PHP dynamically (the data comes from an XML file), however I want to strip the a link and the text that is linked.

PHP's strip_tags takes out the <a etc...> and </a> but not the text in between.

I am currently trying to use the Regex preg_replace('#(<a.*?>).*?(</a>)#', '', $content);