Zack Abdool-Rassool gives the final judgement on Notorious, a warts-and-all documentary looking at 21st century sport’s most controversial character, Conor McGregor
A documentary following the rise to fame and success of “the notorious” Conor McGregor… The documentary portrays a feel of a journey that we as the viewer are a part of, as we follow Conor through his times of struggle and debt living with his mother, jobless, with only his dream of making it to the UFC. The documentary shows his early stages of training, showing how Conor made it his life to make it to the UFC.
The documentary shows how he quit his job to pursue his dream of becoming a fighter early on in the documentary this automatically struck me as a viewer to have some sort of empathy for Conor and makes me as a viewer looking upon Conor’s career rethink his supposed arrogance. As when following his storyline this arrogance never showed until he had the money and materialistic luxuries to prove for it. Before his arrogant persona rose it was self-belief. There are many quotes during the documentary that strengthen this statement for example, “I mean I was a little chimp, I was only a kid, had a chip on my shoulder, little chimp running around trying to own the place, but I kept showing up, and then became the gorilla” what Conor is saying by this is all his self-belief as a child running around adamant that he would make it to the UFC played off then he became the one that was feared.
The whole documentary is based around the idea of this self-belief that Conor had, and that the rich, arrogant “face of the UFC’ that you see nowadays was built upon a young Irish man being money driven with providing for his family, this is made clear as in the documentary after his first big pay check after his first fight in the UFC he buys his girlfriend a land rover.
Overall, the storyline is perfect over the duration of the documentary starting with showing his in his gym barely being able to afford headgear for a sparring session to one of the ending scenes being his legendary win against Nate Diaz, and Conor proving his quote “this isn’t for 3 weeks, this isn’t for 8 weeks, this is for life” that he said during his fight camp during cage warriors. Allowing him to own his quote “they all doubted me, every one of you doubted me, doubt me now, doubt me now”. the empathy that I gained as a viewer following his story made me almost connect with McGregor as a person. the documentary gives a view of Conor McGregor from an inside perspective that the News and Tabloids don’t often show making it a must watch as it certainly altered my views on Conor McGregor.
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