Growing up in San Bernardino, where options are limited and bad choices reside on every street corner, Green committed himself to wrestling in high school, but had to watch as his little brother, Mitchell Wayne Davis Jr., went in a different direction, joining a local gang. Some years later, after wrestling became a pathway to mixed martial arts and the man known as “King” was competing on the biggest stage in the sport, he got word that his brother had passed; shot and killed in a drive-by shooting.
“I lost my grandmother, I lost my brother; I didn’t have a mom; I didn’t have a dad,” Green said, reflecting on some the major challenges and losses he’s dealt with over the course of his life. “All these people that use excuses like that to hold them back, I’m the epitome of that ‘Never Quit.’”
It’s a mantra and a mindset that he carries with him into the Octagon every time he fights.
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“There have been a lot of fights I’ve been in where they thought I was done, but next thing you know, second, third round are both mine,” he continued, smiling sheepishly. “Even if the first is a little slower, for sure the second and third are mine.”
While some may characterize him as a slow starter, Green likens his approach to that of a quarterback, standing at the line of scrimmage, reading the defense, and making adjustments with his coaches based on what they see when he goes back to his corner between rounds.
“I’m putting all my reads together and then I want to go back to my corner, see what my coaches tell me,” he said, breaking down his general approach. “Sammo (head coach Sam Mason) usually tells me, ‘Hey — I need you to be get more busy!’ and then it’s, ‘Yes Sir!’ and we go back in there and do what we need to do.
“I call myself a quarterback because I’ll go out there and fight the fight, but I don’t have a specific game plan,” continued Green, who arrived in the UFC on a four-fight winning streak before adding four additional victories to climb into the Top 10 in the lightweight division before an extended run of close, competitive fights and unfavorable results knocked him from the rankings.
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“I’ve got things I want to do, but it’s not a real game plan because I don’t know what he’s going to do,” he said of his fight with Iaquinta, who enters on a two-fight skid of his own and competes for the first time in 25 months on Saturday. “I play off the play because if they’re blitzing all night, I’m gonna start calling audibles and change the whole line around, start doing this depending on how he plays the game.