You probably spent the past few weeks trawling through grainy, buffering, two-hour-long YouTube videos for the pleasure of watching Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather inflict verbal warfare upon each other.
Bar the occasional dodgy stream, I’m betting your enjoyment was largely legal. So take consolation in that, as I tell you the story of how a young man, just like me or you, sneaked backstage to walk out onto ringside at one of the biggest combat sporting events in history as part of The Notorious‘ crew.
Don’t believe me? Footage or it didn’t happen? Watch this and weep, my friends:
In the footage we see Zac Alsop on a one-man mission, from the moment he receives a dare to sneak backstage at Wembley, through to the execution of his covert operation, which begins by making a himself a fake Guest and Promoter pass to the event.
It’s subterfuge the likes of which we haven’t seen since Oceans Eleven.
Having donned a disguise of Primark’s finest brogues, Zac traverses security, dodges henchmen and befriends the Irishman’s supporters, before walking on stage within touching distance of Conor himself.
Zac Alsop – YouTuber, expert at PhotoShop and living legend – spoke exclusively to UNILAD about the wild feat:
It was pretty mad, definitely one of those sobering moments where time goes a bit slower, memories from your childhood all come rushing back and then I got this overwhelming sense of pride, like a surrogate father watching his older Irish son do his first school play.
Alsop’s narration is worthy of the finest sporting commentary and his resourcefulness is unbridled.
He fell at only one hurdle: Zac had set himself a series of four challenges and the final one was to ask Mr McGregor whether he’d rather fight a Mayweather-sized duck or twenty duck-sized Mayweather’s… But faced with the tough-talking MMA champ, Alsop bottled it.
The YouTuber, whose channel is designed to ‘make stories to tell the grandkids’, told us who he thinks will reign victorious on August 26:
I’ll quote Frankie Boyle on this one: I think someone trying to beat possibly history’s best defensive boxer purely by being a mad cunt is actually beautiful. That’s definitely something I can get behind.
McGregor is a man who laughs in the face of authority, if the pinstripes on his press conference suit were anything to go by.
Conor admires hard work and resourcefulness and the gall to go with your gut, as he said in a quiet moment backstage.
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…So maybe he won’t mind Zac’s little prank.
Give this industrious young man a title of his own!
A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.