The Ultimate Fighting Championship became a cultural phenomenon with a simple, yet clever marketing idea : finding a middle ground between the realness of boxing and the drama of WWE. That allowed every man in America to bitch, curse and grunt at their television set without suffering the stigma of watching a male pendant of MELROSE PLACE. Because to men, it has to be real or it is useless. The takeover of American culture by the UFC was done independantly from its product. The fights are the fights. They are the only object the company considers sacred.
So the image you're being sold of the brave warrior, bloodied and battered inside the ocatgon, courageously fighting his demons before ending the night in a Las Vegas pool alongside the spoils of victory isn't real. It has nothing to do with fighting. It's a romantic fantasy that appeals to the most neediest, most childish part of your brain. TAKEDOWN: THE DNA OF GSP offers somewhat of an original take on the contemporary myth of the mixed martial arts athlete. The legend of ex-UFC champion Georges St-Pierre was built on martial arts values and a rabid passion for the sport. The saying that champions don't do like anybody else is true.
TAKEDOWN: THE DNA OF GSP is both a good and a bad documentary, but it always finds a way to remain pertinent and interesting. The first 40 minutes consists of a series of fascinating anecdotes about the champ and his path to the UFC title. Spearheading the narrative effort is John Danaher, GSP's Brazilian Jiu-J itsu trainer and mixed martial arts guru, remembering the first times his fighter traveled all the way to New York to train at the pretigious Renzo Gracie Academy where Dahaner still teaches today. The teacher speaks of a young man the public didn't already know, short on cash and filled with enthusiasm, who would go through major sacrifices for the priviledge to train with him. It's rare nowadays to hear stories of GSP devoid of an entourage and über-professional training camps.
The most fascinating aspect of TAKEDOWN: THE DNA OF GSP is to see what was he like when he was alone and fighting the odds. The documentary spends time in GSP's hometown of St-Isidore, pounding the street and giving a good feeling of what is was to live in this place and in the house where he grew up. The simple act of filming GSP's father's yard gives TAKEDOWN: THE DNA OF GSP a realistic edge a series of UFC Primetime never had. That's one thing about the champ, he's always been well surrounded. As soon as he could afford it, he hired a tip-top, trustworthy team of experts to handle everything for him, from his training to his public image. When GSP won the title, he became a well-guarded figure and lost some interest as a documentary figure, something that TAKEDOWN: THE DNA OF GSP translates rather well.
The second part of TAKEDOWN: THE DNA OF GSP falls a little flat, yet remains unwittingly pertinent. Everybody has seen GSP's knee injury recovery footage already. I know it's an important part of his career, but I was hoping for a different angle on what could be the last stretch of his career. His injury recovery has been aired on social media, on UFC Primetime and in a French documentary series that reveals how communications juggernaut Sid Lee rebranded Georges St-Pierre to distance him from mixed martial arts. I don't think a single GSP fan hasn't seen this footage yet. Going over the Carlos Condit and Nick Diaz fights again was an occasion to attack the narrative with a fresh angle, but TAKEDOWN: THE DNA OF GSP treats you to a digest of his injury recovery instead. I don't know, maybe there wasn't a fresh angle to it.
Interestingly enough, the movie ends with the Nick Diaz fight, a choice that takes a whole new perspective now that GSP announced somewhat of a pre-retirement. The hype of this fight was engineered by the greatest failure to communicate in the post-COOL HAND LUKE era. Both fighters got angry at one another because they misinterpreted one another's exotic take on the English language. What interested me in that fiasco is that GSP could only make ''motherfucker'' out of Nick Diaz heavy, colloiqual speech and inserted Diaz in his self-motivating narrative of metaphorically fighting the bullies of his youth, yet it didn't quite work because the challenger didn't fit the bill. John Danaher wisely pointed out that Nick Diaz uses ''motherfucker'' not as an insult, but as a way to say ''human being'', which is both funny and not far from the truth.
Nick Diaz isn't really a bully. He is a kid who grew up in a tough city and who can't get the words right when he speaks, which results in hilarious, acrobatic sentences. He never ushered more than petty, easy insults at GSP and was never a threat. That fight was a convoluted joke, a ''wolf ticket'' as colourfully pointed out in the press conference and the result indicated so. GSP beat up Nick Diaz without much difficulty, like an older kid in the schoolyard. If TAKEDOWN: THE DNA OF GSP raises one interesting question, it:'s : how much of an impact the Nick Diaz fight had in GSP's retirement? As fictionnal superhero Batman once said: ''You can die a hero or live long enough to see yourself becoming the villain''.
TAKEDOWN: THE DNA OF GSP was released on limited screens all over America, but it's already on VOD systems. It's a documentary that takes easy decisions here and there, but that finally offers somewhat of a human portrait of an athlete who became a symbol of excellence to young men all over the world. TAKEDOWN: THE DNA OF GSP doesn't offer all the answers, but the job of a good documentary sometimes is to raise the right questions.