Ask seven-time IHRA Pro Modified world champion Scotty Cannon or Bubba Green when they were growing up together if they ever envisioned them racing together, and the answer would have been a resounding no.
As Cannon describes their relationship, the half brothers have the same mother but different fathers, and they were joined at the hip until Scotty turned nine and moved to his father’s house.
“I mean we ain’t never been into it or fighting and fussing, big fall-outs and all that,” said Cannon, who is four years older. “We had normal quarrels, little stupid s***. It’s all meant to be.”
And as Greene puts it, “Yeah, he’d say there was no fighting because he always won. It ain’t really fighting to the one that wins all the time.”
The brothers made a decision about a decade ago to rekindle their relationship, no matter what, and they did. It didn’t take long for drag racing to become the common denominator.
Greene started running a small-tire car, and his older brother was more than willing to help.
Cannon was pretty much out of touring the Pro Modified circuits, and who could blame him? He raced Pro Modified since its 1990 inception, and walked away at the end of 1998, as the winningest driver in the series with 28 national event wins as a driver, six series championships as a driver, and one championship as a crew chief.
Cannon, the first Pro Modified driver inducted into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame, was the winningest driver in Pro Modified for ten years after he left to pursue an NHRA Funny Car career. Greene was around in the background during those days, supporting his sibling, but because of the growth of his business, he couldn’t travel to all the races to support Cannon.
Make no mistake about it, if he could have, he would have.
“He came to the local races,” Cannon said. “But you got to understand, you got a guy that’s got his five kids, and he started young like me, and he didn’t have the breaks that I had, and was fortunate to make it with a big career like I did early in life.
“Now his career is rocking and has been rocking for a few years, and it’s doing real good, and he’s good with money and saves it. So we are racing, we are enjoying ourselves. We are the two old men out there racing, the modern two old men we want to call it. I don’t want to be the old man, but we are old.”
As Cannon sees it, he lived his dream and now he’s intent on seeing his brother live his own.
“I lived a dream of a lifetime, brother,” Cannon said. “Then here I am again, living a dream. Tell me the good Lord can’t be good to you. That’s the way I look at it. Me and my brother and I both set out four years ago to bring our families closer, and we figured out that with our background and the way things were, if we didn’t set that sample, the pattern would continue forever, and we’re breaking the cycle one way or another. And that’s the truth. That’s the God’s honest truth.”
When Greene made the decision to go Pro Modified, the offer was made to Cannon to drive. And while Cannon appreciated the gesture, he made it known that it was Greene’s time to shine.
While Cannon was the Killer Red Mater, Green became his brother in southern ‘maters – the revered green tomato, the kind people in the South fry up for Sunday dinner.
“He said I could have driven,” Cannon said. “He didn’t have a problem with that, but it’s not fair. I mean, I’ve done it and I want to drive again. I’ll drive for someone else or maybe myself, but we don’t have to be careful about money, and we don’t have to be careful about getting a loan because of money, and different things. Neither one of us is broke. Ain’t neither one of us filthy rich, but we got enough money.
“We just don’t cry over small s***. We just don’t sweat it. I mean, if it’s a thousand, $1500, $2000, and I owe it to him, you have to make him take it from me. It’s like a kid of mine, he is. It’s my little brother. I mean it’s like I’m living a childhood again, man in a 62-year-old body. It’s unreal.”
Greene didn’t ask a second time because, as he sees it, he’s got the opportunity of a lifetime.
“He has been my biggest learning resource out here,” Greene admitted. “I mean, you got to figure two years ago, [April 2023] is when I sat down in a Pro Mod car, and then I was out for six months because I pulled my tricep muscle off. I really barely have been in the car for a little over a year, if you count all the downtime from racing and then the actual racing part we’ve done.
“Every time I get out of the car, I get commentary on what I can do to improve. Then when I do good, he says, ‘I ain’t saying nothing.’ He said, ‘You did great.”
“I don’t know how to explain it. He’s the best professor I’ve ever had because if it comes to chewing your butt, he don’t mind chewing your butt, but you can’t take it personal. It’s all in the learning process.”
When it came time to apply the graphics at Victory Vinyl Wraps for his new Montana Brothers-built Camaro, Greene felt it was time to merge their bond into a race car. His previous car was all Greene [identity], but now the ride has a bit of both of them.
“Well, it’s kind of like we’re doing this thing together, so it’s got a little of me and a little of him, so it’s showcasing our brotherhood,” Greene explained. “That’s the way I looked at it. It’s got his iconic killer meter, red or hot rod red, which is what I call it. Then it’s got some of my green stripes, my green tomato on it, back into his yellow and orange in the back of it. It just kind of fit. It went together really well.”
Walking in to pick up the car, and seeing their identities merged into one, hit harder than an 8-year old’s sucker punch back in the day.
“I’m having a ball. Good Lord has blessed me,” Cannon said, voice cracking with emotion. “Getting my health back was the main thing because I wasn’t really ready to do as much as we’re doing until a couple of years ago when I got my blood work straightened out, and I’ve been going ever since. I’m telling you I got it made, man. It’s just unreal.”
The look on Cannon’s face was priceless for Greene.
“You know how big his heart is and how he is on giving,” Cannon said. “He’ll give you the shirt off his back. That’s what he’s done here, and I wear it proudly.”
