This Saturday former Bellator Light Heavyweight Champion Emanuel Newton will be one of four 205-pounders competing for a shot at Bellator strap.
Newton, along with his first opponent Phil Davis, King Mo Lawal and Linton Vassell, will compete in a single-day tournament at Bellator 142: Dynamite 1.
Saturday presents a great opportunity for Newton to force himself back on track for the title after he just lost the championship in his most recent fight – a decision loss to Liam McGeary. As tough as losing the Light Heavyweight crown was, Newton is focused on what lays ahead of him.
“I’ve moved on,” Newton said on The MMA Report Live. “One thing about me is I think differently than the majority of people. I have my conversations with the universe. I have my conversations with my inner being which we all have. Everybody has that conscious… After that fight, I had a good conversation with myself.”
To add further insult to his loss to McGeary, Newton also failed a drug test for marijuana and would later concede in interviews that he used the substance around fight time. Having reevaluated his habits and molded them to fit his fighting career, Newton understands the importance of discipline and potential success it could bring him.
“Nothing is worth not having a victory,” Newton said. “Nothing is worth not being able to move up the next level or holding something that you truly want to hold.”
With the championship loss and the drug test failure behind him, what’s in front of Newton is former UFC light heavyweight contender Phil Davis. With the other two contestants in the tournament having already fought Newton, it made sense to him that his initial match-up would be against a fresh name.
“I’m ranked tenth, he’s ranked sixth in the world… It makes sense to me for that fight to happen,” Newton said. “If anything that would be the fight that I want because I already beat the other two guys, so what’s the point of me going out there and going at it with them again when I have a man here who would move up the rankings and give me more recognition and give me more MMA exposure.”
“I knew it was going to Phil, I had a feeling it was going to be Phil, and it was Phil.”
Analyzing the match-up itself, Newton respects what Davis will bring to the cage and expects an intriguing fight, but he believes that he has the type of style that will match up well against Davis in the two-round fight.
“Phil is very agile,” Newton said. “He’s agile for his size. He’s obviously very strong. He’s a good fighter all around. I think my style matches up well with his, and i think it’s going to be an interesting fight.”
“I tend to do pretty good against wrestlers,” Newton would go on to say. “I tend to slip out of a lot of their stuff, eventually defend the takedown and my unorthodox style is always good to keep a wrestler on their toes because a wrestler has to take the shot in order to get the takedown. With my style being unorthodox, being awkward, I think that I will put a damper on his game in order for me to defend more shots and be able to land more strikes.”