Despite the 29-14-1 slate he carries into the Octagon on Saturday, Green has always been more than a win-loss record. Like many standouts from over the years, you remember him not for the end result, but the journey to get there, and how it felt watching him. So when you put the obituary on the career of Bobby Green, he makes it clear that it was never about the belt.
“I was never interested in the title,” he said. “I was never interested in those things. Guys like Jorge Masvidal, guys like Nate Diaz, we never got the title, but we’re bigger than some of the actual titleholders. And so, to me, it was more about the mission of inspiring people. The mission was to get people to just feel alive again. Sometimes someone’s going through a long life and they’re just living life, but they’re not really living. And so maybe I could wake some people up and shock ‘em a little bit.”
View Green’s Athlete Profile | Lightweight Rankings
It’s an unselfish attitude, one that may have hurt his bottom line over the years. But he has no regrets about that or concerns if that was the case. For him, doing what he set out to do was the biggest victory, one that he can see reflected in his kids and others he’s influenced.
“The goal at the end of the day was accomplishing my goal of putting out good content that could be timeless, that people could watch forever, that people would enjoy while I could be a great human being, someone that I could be proud of when I left this game, and giving some poor little kid a new way to look at things. I came just from where you came from. Some people don’t think that I came from these dark places, they think I’m just this rich guy or I’m thinking I’m this or that. No, I came exactly where you came from. Hard times.”
