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Bobby Green says he will indeed retire after UFC Vegas 71 — only to be born anew as King.
Green, 36, meets Jared Gordon in a lightweight bout this Saturday at the promotion’s return to the UFC APEX. A 15-year-old MMA veteran, Green announced on Instagram Stories in February that he plans to retire after the fight. However, he left out one important detail.
Speaking this week to MMA Underground, Green clarified that he only is retiring his name. That’s because he plans to legally change his name to his longtime fighter nickname, “King,” once his business with Gordon is done.
“I’ve been telling everybody that I was retiring after this fight, and what I meant was, I was retiring as Bobby Green,” he explained. “I’m going to be changing my name, and I will no longer be Bobby Green. I’m changing my name to just King. No last name. Just one name. And so this is just the beginning of a new chapter for me.”
Green said he’s wanted to change his name for “a couple of years” and even attempted to do previously, only to be thwarted because of outstanding debt he had to pay.
“I was fighting so many cases with my baby mommas, child support and s*** like that. They told me, I think I spent like $1,000 or maybe $1,200 to change my name, and they were like, ‘Hey, no, you can’t do that bro, because you’ve got another case, and you’ve got another case,’ and everything, and they didn’t give me money back either,” Green said. “They just took my money, so I was like, ‘F***.’ I just thought about it for years, and now here it is again, where now I’ve gotten cool with the women in my life and we’re all good, and so I’m just going to [change it]. Now I can do what I want to do and take care of these things.
“I’m just doing something different, like Kanye, like Prince,” he added. “I’m just going to be me, bro. I’m just different than everybody else that’s coming around this joint.”
Green noted that he still has goals he wants to achieve in MMA before he hangs up his gloves for good; chief among them is headlining his first proper UFC event after previously headlining UFC Vegas 49 as a short-notice replacement against Islam Makhachev.
Until then, he’s going to keep grinding away in the UFC lightweight division, where he holds a 10-9-1 record over 20 appearance since 2013.
Green is also curious to see how the longtime voice of the UFC, in-cage announcer Bruce Buffer, handles his introduction once he switches to his new mononym moniker.
“I’m like, ‘Wait, how the f-ck is he going to do that now?’” he said, laughing.
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