Phil 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.
"My take on Emanuel, and I think he'd agree with me, is that he's a free thinker out in the cage," Davis told MMAFighting.com. "Some fighters go into their fights with complex game plans, but Emanuel is going to do whatever feels right to him in the moment. And hey, it's worked for him, so more power to him."
Of course, it could also be said the fighter nicknamed "Mr. Wonderful" is a bit of a free thinker himself. After spending five years in the UFC, the former NCAA wrestling champion out of Penn State became the biggest-name fighter in his prime to make the jump over to Bellator since Scott Coker took over.
And Saturday night, which marks Davis' Bellator debut, occurs on the most free-thinking event to hit these shores in awhile, as the four-man light heavyweight tournament is part of a Bellator Dynamite event which features both MMA and kickboxing.
"It's going to be an exciting night," Davis said. "We don't know what to expect, there's so much going on, but that's part of why it's exciting to be here."
Davis said he didn't hesitate when Bellator contacted him about the upcoming tournament. His only questions were in the details.
"My only hesitation was, at first, I wondered they meant like the old Bellator tournaments," Davis said. "Where you had to fight three fights and then get the title shot if you won. I didn't come to Bellator for that. As soon as they told me at was like the old-school tournaments, the one-night type, I was like ‘sign me up.' They don't have to sell me on it any more after that."
The tournament consists of Davis vs. Newton in the first round, and "King Mo" Lawal vs. Linton Vassall in the other matchup, with the winners squaring off (there is also an alternates match between Francis Carmont and Philipe Lins). The first-round fights are two-five minute rounds, while the final is scheduled for three five-minute rounds.
But even though the maximum Davis can potentially compete on Saturday is 25 minutes, the Alliance MMA fighter says the training isn't quite the same as preparing for a five-round bout.
"Here's the thing," Davis said. "Cardio, your training isn't all that different. The thing that's different is the mental aspect. Because after you fight, your body comes down. There are times I'm sitting in the locker room after my fight, and I'll see a cut or a bruise or something and I don't even know where it came from, because you're so amped up on adrenaline during the fight. I have to ask my coach, ‘did I get hit in the arm?' or something like that.
"Once you come out of that zone, your body comes down with it," Davis continues. "And then you don't know how long it will be until you're next fight, because you don't know how long the other fights are going to go. Fortunately this is something where I can tap into my wrestling experience with all-day tournaments to manage things. But yeah, I'm not worried about what happens in the cage, it's the in-between that's the tricky part."
While most seem to figure the finals will come down to Davis vs. King Mo, Davis demurs on making a prediction on who he could meet in the finals should he defeat Newton, other than noting that he'd like to test himself out against Lawal. Besides, Lawal is one of the many fighters who has found out the hard way what can happen when you underestimate Newton, so Davis is determined not to make the same mistakes.
"Here's the thing when you fight a dude like Newton," Davis said. "It's like what happened with King Mo. When Newton starts doing his thing and he starts freelancing out there, the worst thing you can do is try to play his game with him. That's how people get knocked out. So for me, the thing is keeping my cool and sticking with the game plan."