MMA Fighting · Sep 19, 2015
Phil Davis on Bellator, Emanuel Newton, and free thinkers
Esther Lin photoPhil Davis calls his first-round opponent in Saturday's Bellator one-night light heavyweight tournament in San Jose, Emanuel Newton, a "free thinker."
Sometimes Newton, the former Bellator 205-pound champion, seems content to spend the entire fight grinding along the cage, an effective if not exactly fan-friendly strategy. Others, he appears intent on setting a world record for most spinning strikes attempted in a fight, as if a playing an MMA video game discovered the code for spinning back fists and started using it over and over.
Newton's opponents never seem to know quite what to expect.