The trash talk got a little too personal between Cam Newton and two TopShelf Performance (TSP) coaches before a brawl broke out at a youth 7-on-7 football game in Atlanta on Sunday.
Newton, a former NFL MVP quarterback, made headlines when social media videos showed him involved in a physical altercation at the tournament with brothers TJ and Steph Brown of TSP, who shared their recollection of the incident.
After TSP defeated Newton’s C1N on Saturday in a heated match, TJ told Fox News Digital that things escalated during an exchange with Newton in a parking lot the next day.
“Sunday comes, I’m walking through the parking lot, walking to the field,” TJ said. “Cam jumps out of his car and yells, ‘Hey, all that sorry s— ain’t gonna work today. What we betting today? What we betting?’
“I’m like, ‘I ain’t betting you, bro. I already beat you three, four times. You got to beat me first.’
“He’s like, ‘What we betting? I got plenty of money. I ain’t ever running out of money.’ That’s when I told him, ‘That’s your problem. All you care about is money. You think money is everything. You can’t buy me.’ And I walk off.”
Newton and the Brown brothers have history.
They’ve known the former NFL MVP since 2020, when Newton appointed TJ head coach of one of his C1N 7-on-7 teams, according to Fox News Digital.
Steph was Newton’s wide receivers coach and a member of his offensive support staff for C1N.
The brothers said they left C1N in 2022 to create their own 7-on-7 team, TSP, after tensions with Newton due to TJ’s team apparently defeating the team Newton coached at the time.
TJ and Steph recalled things getting personal when they noticed Newton at the top of a set of stairs with his team allegedly taunting TSP during their game.
The video footage showed Newton at the top of the steps, where the altercation appeared to turn physical.
“As we’re warming up, you see in most of the videos, Cam has this chant where he’s like, ‘Ayo!’ So he yells it over on his sideline, then he tells them, ‘Man, y’all go over there and do it to them too,'” TJ said.
“So all the players run up on us, and they’re like, ‘Ayo!’ Mind you, he knows a lot of our players don’t mess with his players, and some of them are cool. Obviously, as they’re running up on our players, the We Ball [Sports] folks [who organized the event], they’re recording it. All I said to the camera was, ‘Don’t delete the film when I beat him this time,’ because the last time I beat him – the last three times I beat them – all of a sudden there’s no film. ‘Oh, we didn’t record anything. We took pictures.’”
“It’s probably three minutes into the game, he’s sitting up top with all his kids around him under a tent yelling down on us,” TJ said. “‘Hey, I know that play. That’s my stuff. I taught y’all everything y’all know. I’m y’all daddy. I made y’all. I’m the reason for everything y’all got going on.’ He’s just yelling all this stuff.”
One parent who was present for the altercation and chose to remain anonymous confirmed to Fox News Digital that Newton was taunting TSP.
After the game, Steph confronted Newton when he claimed the former All-Pro quarterback grabbed him during a face-to-face exchange.
TJ, who was walking up the stairs and saw the incident, then threw a punch at Newton — and the fight spilled over near a fence and grassy area.
“If you’re walking up a flight of stairs, and you see a 6’6″ guy grab your little brother trying to throw him down some stairs, you’re going to intervene,” TJ said. “It doesn’t matter who you are, rather it be a punch, rather it be a push, rather it be grabbing him. You’re going to do something. So, at that point, with Cam putting his hands on another grown man, something is going to come behind that.”
Atlanta police and event security intervened to split up the altercation.
No arrests were made and everyone involved had to leave the event.
“It just should never have gotten to that,” TJ said. “First off, on the organizer’s part, we weren’t even supposed to be playing Cam. They were on the whole other side of the bracket.”
The TSP coaches, who expressed regret for their involvement in the fight, said they felt there was a lack of accountability by Newton and We Ball Sports.
They also claimed Newton got into it with an event photographer at a Miami 7-on-7 tournament earlier this month.
“This is typical Cam Newton behavior on the 7-on-7 scene,” TJ said. “But yesterday was a little worse, and you can even ask people in his organization. Cam ain’t never act like that.
“I’ve seen him talk crazy to parents, talk crazy to some of the kids because everybody tries to make it seem like, ‘Oh, the kids just be disrespecting Cam.’ No, Cam be disrespecting people, too.
“He’s just got to understand we’re people. Nobody’s just going to let you go around disrespecting and talking crazy to them. I know how to brush it off, but not everybody’s like that.”
TJ and Steph said they hope to “figure this thing out” with Newton for the sake of the kids and players.
In a joint statement to The Athletic, Steph and TJ said TopShelf is “actively addressing this matter internally.
“We are deeply concerned about the recent incident involving Cam Newton, and our thoughts are with all parties affected,” the statement said. “Violence has no place in our community, and we strongly condemn any form of aggression.”
Newton has yet to address the incident publicly.
