If you ever wondered what happened between NFL star Cam Newton and Kia Proctor, the mother of four of his children, he decided to open up about it during a recent interview between himself and fitness model/Instagram influencer Brittany Renner. Both parties came together for his ‘Funky Friday‘ YouTube series to set the record straight about themselves. During their chat, when Renner posed the question to him about why he didn’t marry Proctor, he didn’t shy away from answering.
“That’s a great question…The thing is that person that I was while we were having children together, I couldn’t be the best husband,” he said. “I wasn’t prepared to be a husband then.”
The couple started dating in 2013 before reportedly breaking up in early 2020, and Newton says she did make it clear that she wanted to be married. As he put it, “the hourglass was shrinking” for Proctor. But he’d seen successful marriages and wasn’t ready to commit in that way.
“We were both young. There was nothing, and still nothing I would never do for her. But at the same time, the person that she was when I met her, it wasn’t the person she was when I left her,” he said. “When I met Kia, and I say this protecting her, she wasn’t the one to be like, ‘I want to be married.’ I was more so the person, my parents been together 36 years. I know what marriage looks like: the ups, the downs, the trials, the tribulations.”
“I seen Kia really evolving into a woman where her standards were, ‘I ain’t just no baby mama,'” he said. “And when she kept putting pressure on me I was like, ‘I don’t know if this is what I really want.'”
In addition to that, he admitted that while in the prime of his NFL career, he couldn’t resist the other women who would approach him.
“I was in temptation island. A football player, young, no is not even in my vocabulary,” he said. “I just found myself in this downward spiral. Did she deserve better? I would humbly say yes. She did.”
“I was falling deeper into my own selfishness and realizing I gotta be better,” he continued. “‘I hope you have the patience,’ which she did. And she was around me through a lot of success, a lot of downfalls and I respect her for that to this day, but it never led to the ultimate, which was a ring.”
He added, “To me, it’s not even an apology that’s needed. We just grew apart.”
The two are on good terms these days as co-parents to their kids, with Newton lauding her for how great she is with them. He is hopeful that if she meets someone special, they will understand the athlete’s place not only in their kids’ lives, but also the place he should still have in Proctor’s — and vice versa.
“The person that comes into her life and says, ‘I will accept you for everything, for kids and all,’ that day is going to come. I would just hope that they would respect that I’m a hands-on dad first. So you gon’ have to see me at some point,” he said. “I still hold some type of [weight] for her to be able to discern, I believe, just like she has the right to discern the day when I say, ‘I’m taking somebody serious and I want them to meet our children.’ She still has the right to say, ‘oh, uh uh. I don’t want her around our kids.’ I would respect that.”
As mentioned, Newton and Proctor were together for about seven years. She entered that relationship with a daughter, and they had four children. Newton also has a child, his youngest, with Instagram model La Reina Shaw. He claims as his own the children both ladies had from their previous relationships as well, saying he has seven children altogether.