Carlos Newton is a mixed martial arts fighter hailing from Ontario. He is a two time middle weight champion. He was born in the West Indies and moved to Canada at an early age, and has been training martial arts since he was in elementary school. All of his training seems to have paid off: he is a two time world middle weight UFC champion. He has been fighting in the UFC since 1996, and while his record is hardly uncontested, he has made a good showing of himself.
As much as I am able to recognize good fighters, Mr. Newton is one. It is not because he is a technically superior fighter (which he is) or that he easily dominates his competition all the time (which he does not), but because he fights in a very methodical, patient way. I can see him thinking in every way he moves. Even when trapped in a bad situation, such as being on the floor in the guard for several minutes, I get the sense that his mind is patiently working over the possibilities of things to do. In another instance, I watched a tape of him getting kneed in the head at least ten times, and after escaping, going back into perfect patient fighting form, without showing any kind of anger or fear about what had just happened.
His intelligent, methodical nature is not confined to the octagon. He is well known as a person who investigates the more philosophical realms of martial arts, as well as being an overall sophisticated, intellectual person. His ideas on fighting come from such books as The Art of War and The Book of Five Rings, as well as watching DragonBall Z and other fighting anime. He is currently in college, studying premed. He says for fun he likes to read textbooks with his girlfriend.
Here, then, is someone we can all admire: an intelligent, polite fighter who is also a gifted student, and, most unbelievably, an otaku with a girlfriend.