Linton fighting for more than a title

By Nicole Montesano

Smoke Signals staff writer

Pain is stitched through Tribal member Denny Linton’s life story. There is pain inflicted by the violent sport he credits with giving him a path forward, and the emotional pain of a background steeped in trauma, drugs and alcohol. There is the pain of losing people he loved and sometimes, having to walk away from people he loved to find his own way.

But pain, Linton said, can be learned from and overcome. If it outlines his story, it is, nonetheless, only one part of it. There are other parts as well: Family. Love. Friendship. Pride in his accomplishments. The desire to help others fight their way out of addiction.

Linton, 33, has a seven-fight winning streak, and a pro mixed martial arts record of eight fights won, three lost and one draw. He fights in the featherweight class, most recently on Sept. 7 at Chinook Winds Casino in Lincoln City, where he defeated opponent Jimmy Zydek.

“I’m gonna show people that I belong competing with the best in the world,” he said.

On Nov. 2, Linton, known in the mixed martial arts world as “Mountain Warrior,” will be back at Chinook Winds to defend his world title as featherweight king of the cage, and he said he wants that fight to serve as inspiration to others.

“I want to dedicate this next fight to anybody that can’t fight for themselves, a victim of abuse,” Linton said. “I want to bring courage and strength to anybody suffering. I want them to know that they’re not alone, and there’s people willing to fight for them.”

Linton said doctors have told him he needs to stop fighting due to damage he’s already sustained from the sport.

He isn’t ready to do that yet.

“I never really looked into it or headed their advice … It’s been a way to allow me to heal and cope with the pain that I’m going through, the things that I’ve seen, the people I’ve lost in my life, the ones I’ve walked away from,” he said. “It’s allowing me to heal.”

In the meantime, however, he hopes to begin teaching wrestling to give back to the community. Eventually, he said, he’d like to open his own gym.

It has taken a lot of fighting to get where he is today. Linton said his parents, like so many of their generation, fell into addiction; his mother to drugs and his father to alcohol.

“We grew up in kind of a broken home,” he said. “I don’t have a lot of memories of those times.”

Eventually, he said his father was able to remain sober, and moved himself and his children to Willamina.

“He was a logger,” Linton said. “That was a rough job, as a single dad of six. I grew up in Tribal housing.”

While in housing, he found that drinking and drugs were “all around.”

“I grew up fighting on the Rez,” Linton said. “It was a thing we did, our fun back then.”

He didn’t know at the time that fighting would provide a path for him. In third grade, Linton said, his father got him into wrestling. “Dad really put in a lot of work to make sure we got good training,” he said, and he grew to love the sport.

“I think I was in high school when one of my coaches from Willamina, Ray Carpenter, had a cage fight,” he recalled. “I went and watched it live, and I think like a month later, I was in a cage. It’s been a bumpy road, but here we are.”

That was in 2009.

Linton started as an amateur fighter, he said, and then went pro, but drug addiction took hold.

“I walked down a rough patch in life,” he said. “I was in and out of jail and prison for quite a few years. The last time I was in prison, I spent 360 days in the hole, in solitary confinement.”

During that time, he said, “I was really able to tap into my soul. … I had a journal and I wrote down a 5-year plan. … I visualized it every day and thought about it, and put in a lot of work on my body and my mind.”

Included in that plan were making it into the UFC – the Ultimate Fighting Championship company – and buying a house.

Today, the house has become a reality. He and wife Shilo have four children ages 5 to 15, and after taking a break from fighting from 2018 to 2023, Linton is back at it.

He and Shilo, he said, “make such a good team. We’re grateful for everything we have. We know we’ve just got to keep putting in the work and moving forward.”

For awhile after prison, Linton said, the family lived with Shilo’s parents.

“My father-in-law had a talk with me, and said I needed to quit fighting and get to work,” he recalled.

Soon after, Linton took a job as a timber faller.

 “I went to work and kind of nailed that five-year plan with a chainsaw,” he said.

Today, he divides his time between work, training – either in Portland or at home – and spending time with his children, Brenda, 5, Denny, 6, Mila, 9 and Kel-ani, 15.

“Being present for my kids is really important to me,” he said.

But the road hasn’t been easy. Linton acknowledged that “I was drinking heavily last year, and still training, working heavy hours.”

A friend loaned him a cage to set up at home, and he added a punching bag, Linton said. “It was really good for my mental health,” he said, and he was able to get himself into shape to start fighting again.

An injury in December derailed him temporarily, but he now has a winning streak of seven fights and is looking forward to the next one.

Eventually, he’d like to “put the saw down,” and open his own gym where he can coach others.

 “I want to show people that grew up like I did that there is a way to heal, or grow into your pain, because you can’t escape it,” Linton said. “You’ve gotta grow into it and learn something from it.”

Linton said it was his mother who gave him his fighting nickname of “Mountain Warrior.”

“She was a dreamer too,” he said. “She was such a beautiful soul; always happy, and somebody to talk to. I named my daughter after her. It was really important that we keep that special part of her, and I honestly believe she’s helped me in a lot of ways. She’s one of the ones who looks after us.”