A conversation with Emanuel Newton, Bellator’s light heavyweight champion, is unlike a conversation with anyone else in mixed martial arts. If pushed, he can take you to some very strange places. But pushing him is not strictly necessary for the journey.
Pick any question, even the standard ones about techniques, training partners and longtime goals—just don’t expect a standard answer in return. At one point during our 23-minute talk in advance of his Bellator 130 title defense Friday against Linton Vassell on Spike TV, Newton talked for nearly four consecutive minutes, straight monologuing about the meaning of life.
You may know him as the master of the spinning backfist, a move he says he’s mastered with coaches Arnold Chon and Robert Drimel. He’s more. So much more. The man, simply put, is a little bit weird. Delightfully so.
“How we make our decisions is off of our deja vus. Our coincidences. Our dreams. Our omens. The energy that comes from a person’s heart can turn that thought into works. We all have auras. We all have chakras in our body. And when you do that stuff, you can bless yourself,” Newton said. “…The same atom that dwells in our DNA is the same atom that makes up our sun. There’s no difference. We’re made from stardust. You know?”
Newton punctuated many of his deep thoughts with that phrase.
“You know?”
Frankly, I did not know. I did not know at all. But I am hardly one to be out-weirded, even by a master like Matt Horwich, MMA‘s reigning lovable goofball. I was tempted to jump right into the mix, to bring up Descartes’ theory about the pineal gland being the primary seat of the soul or the influence of circadian rhythms on human performance.
Newton inspires that kind of madcap energy. He’s a walking digression.
Instead, in a rare display of discipline, I asked him about his first recorded fight, a tale featuring Tito Ortiz, a drive to Monterey, Mexico, and an opponent, Brian Ebersole, who had 33 pro fights under his belt.
“They said, ‘Hey, do you want to fight?’ I said, ‘Let’s do it.’ I was a kid at the time. Nineteen years old,” Newton said. “I wasn’t even supposed to fight Ebersole. His guy didn’t end up showing up. I showed up. This was back in the day. 2003. MMA was just starting to catapult into the big time. Everything was still underground. That was how the scene was. Going to Mexico to fight some guy and having no idea who he is or what his record was just kind of the norm.”
The loss was typical of his early career. He was just a kid having fun, making a little money, completely unconcerned about his professional record. Which was probably a good thing, as it stood at just 2-3, hardly the marker of a major prospect.
But a stint wrestling at Cerritos College, a junior college powerhouse in California, convinced Newton that this fighting gig could be for real. By 2005 he was looking at things in a different way. He started training with Antonio McKee and sparred with the likes of Dan Henderson and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson.
On May 19, 2007, he won his sixth fight in a row, dispatching Jeff Quinlan at an IFL event in Chicago. Things were going his way. As a present to himself, he bought a motorcycle. It was a decision that didn’t end well.
The Honda CBR600 is a fast bike—perfect for Newton, a man who takes life at full speed. One fateful night on his way home from his regular gig as a bouncer in a Neptune, California, bar, full speed was quantifiable—152 mph. That was as fast as he could make the bike go. He estimates he had slowed to 140 before losing control.
“I had ridden bigger bikes before without any problems. I was just trying to top it out and got too fast. Racing cars and being a fool and ended up crashing,” Newton said. “I had so many surgeries because they had to take metal out of my arm. Antibiotics don’t do anything to combat that kind of foreign object in your body. At one point I had an external fixator coming out of my arm. I wore that for about six weeks to stabilize my arm. I looked like a cyborg. Like Robocop.”
A badly broken arm, it turns out, was the least of his worries. The series of surgeries led to a staph infection. The infection, in turn, nearly led to the unthinkable.
“I was three days out from them taking my arm off because the infection was getting so bad,” Newton said. “But I was meant to do greater things. I was able to keep my arm, but not just that. I was able to function well enough to get back in the ring and be a champion.”
The accident, more than seven years later, is still with him every day—if not mentally, then in the gym, where he isn’t the man he used to be. Once notable for his powerful slams, Newton’s grappling is now decidedly less high-octane.
“I only have about 60 percent rotation in my right arm. I don’t have the strength on my right side to always hold guys the way I want to. I still get it done. I have definitely adapted,” Newton said. “Is it the same? No. Would I change it and make it the way it was before? No. If I did that, then I wouldn’t be the Emanuel Newton that I am today. I’d keep the arm; I’d keep the scar. I wouldn’t change anything for the world.”
The accident was adversity—no doubt. But for Newton, who lost both parents before graduating high school, it was comparatively light work. He had already mastered pulling himself to his feet and moving forward. Always forward.
“If my parents hadn’t passed, I wouldn’t be the man I am today. I wouldn’t be the fighter I am. I wouldn’t know the people I know,” Newton said. “People always say, ‘Oh you’ve had a hard life.’ No. I went through what I was supposed to. Maybe I wasn’t meant to be someone who had a mom and dad and went through life with a silver spoon in their mouth? Maybe I was meant to go through this hardship to be the person that I am today.
“Everything happens for a reason. We make decisions for ourselves about how our lives will be, the energy that we’ll dwell in. It can either be good or bad. When it comes down to it, anything that happens to you in your life makes you stronger. A lot of people don’t understand that, so when they get knocked down they stay down. They keep getting knocked down over and over again, and before they know it they’re a heroin addict or a crackhead. I believe when things knock you down, it’s a way for the universe to say there are other plans for you.
“There’s always a bigger picture.”
Newton talks a lot about the universe. He cedes many things to it, including the responsibility for his actions. Before his last fight, a surprisingly hard-to-come-by win over Joey Beltran, Newton eschewed the normal post-weigh-in meal for a mere protein shake. It was unorthodox, certainly. But Newton stands by it.
“My connection to my body and the way I think is different than anybody else. I go off of knowing there’s a higher power; I go off of knowing I’m protons, neutrons and electrons. We’re carbon. Six protons. Six neutrons and six electrons. That’s what makes us flesh. The human mind is very strong. If you can take over your mind 100 percent, you can do anything,” Newton said.
“Me going into my last fight with just a protein shake was making my mind stronger. It was testing my connection to the universe. The thoughts that I have in my head are not my own. My actions are not my own. I want to be led by the universe.”
So what, I ask, is the universe telling him about this fight? Will it be another protein shake and wish for the best?
“It’s too early to say. In my last fight I was on an herbal cleanse. To clean out your system. Poop, pee, sweat, everything. I was on that really strong,” Newton said. “The day before the fight I pooped four times. That may be too much information. But I was losing nutrients out of my body. But that’s what the universe told me to do to keep myself clean.”
Equally clean is his record. Since a 2012 loss to Attila Vegh, since avenged, Newton has gone 6-0, including two upset wins over highly regarded wrestler “King” Mo Lawal. But as the promotion has signed a series of high-profile former UFC stars, including former Newton training partners Tito Ortiz and Jackson, the champion’s name has been conspicuously absent from any discussion of light heavyweight superfights.
Newton, on the surface at least, is blissfully unconcerned about when fame will find him. That’s not the same, however, as being unprepared.
“It’s not the time yet. It’s just not the time yet for them to fight me. I believe that something else controls us all. I surrender myself to the sun and the stars and the moon that dwell in the sky. I surrender myself to the higher power that is God,” Newton said. “They’ll want to fight me when the time is right to fight me. Nobody will have my name in their mouth until it’s right for them to have my name in their mouth.
“I could say, ‘Aw, all of them are scared of me.’ But I know the other guys in the organization. None of them are scared of anybody. It’s just not the time to think about me. When the time comes, they’ll think about me. They’ll run their mouths, and I’ll go in there and shut their mouths too.”
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