In Rocky 3 Apollo told Rocky that the reason why he lost his fight to Clubber Lang was because he was fighting for all of the wrong reasons. When we first started our journey to create something for ourselves we did it with good intentions, wanting to be better men and uplifting our communities. Over time though, and most of the time very quickly, we change and we start doing the things that we do out of desperation, to be loved, validated, and it only leads us in a never ending cycle of pain and misery.
Apollo makes it plain to Rocky, "You lost your edge, and now you have to get it back and the way to get it back is to go back to the beginning..."