Conor McGregor's 'Notorious' Story Through a BJJ Lens
Conor McGregor sitting on Jimmy Fallon's couch this week, finally explaining the "Notorious" nickname, is not the kind of story that usually lands on a Jiu Jitsu site. But Conor is a BJJ brown…
Conor McGregor sitting on Jimmy Fallon's couch this week, finally explaining the "Notorious" nickname, is not the kind of story that usually lands on a Jiu Jitsu site. But Conor is a BJJ brown belt under John Kavanagh at SBG Ireland — and the way he talks about how he became "The Notorious" is worth a few minutes of any grappler's attention, because the lesson inside it is one that an awful lot of BJJ athletes are quietly wrestling with in 2026.
The short version, as McGregor told it: his coach had him saved in his phone as "Trouble" when he was a kid. He was, in his own words, "notorious" for getting into it. Add a long-running love for The Notorious B.I.G. — whose music has been his walkout for years — and the nickname just gelled. No focus group, no marketing meeting, no fight-week brainstorm. A coach's contact name and a walkout song that already meant something to him. Watch the clip on YouTube.
The boring truth under the biggest brand in combat sports
It is easy to forget, after a decade of suits and whiskey ads and tabloid wars, that the most recognisable nickname in combat sports started as a real thing about a real kid. Not a persona built in reverse from a press release. Per the BJJEE report, McGregor said it plainly: "I was just notorious for it. That's it."
That is the part the BJJ world should sit with. Jiu Jitsu in 2026 has more athletes trying to build a name than it has ever had — Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, the BJJ Fanatics machine, the Who's Number One billing, the ADCC trials grind. Every blue belt with a competition record is being told to "build a brand." Most of them are reaching for one off a shelf — the heel, the technician, the savage, the smooth operator — instead of doing what McGregor (whatever you think of him) actually did, which was lean into something that was already true about him.
What "build a brand" actually means for a Jiu Jitsu athlete
Look at the names that have travelled the furthest in modern Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and you will see the same pattern McGregor described. Mikey Musumeci did not invent the gentle, anime-loving, ezekiel-from-everywhere guy — that is who he has been since he was a kid, and his career grew up around it. The Ruotolo brothers did not workshop the sunburnt, surf-trip, "best friends and worst enemies" thing; they grew up that way in San Diego, and the cameras eventually caught on. Gordon Ryan did not focus-group "the King" — he genuinely is that guy in the gym, and the persona is just the volume cranked up.
The Jiu Jitsu athletes who manage to be more than a results column on Flograppling are almost always the ones who picked something they were already, and then refused to flinch from it. The ones who pick a character that does not actually belong to them tend to wash out inside a year, because the act gets exhausting and the cameras can smell it.
The BJJ takeaway from McGregor's couch story
McGregor is fighting Max Holloway at UFC 329 on July 11 in Las Vegas — his first walk back since the leg break against Dustin Poirier five years ago — and a story like the Fallon appearance is, of course, partly a promotional engine cranking up. None of that takes away from the basic point. The nickname is sticky because it is real. He really was the kid in his coach's phone as "Trouble." He really did walk out to Biggie. The Notorious B.I.G. reference really did "gel" with the Dublin-prospect-turned-headliner arc he was already living.
If you are a Jiu Jitsu competitor at any level — a 35-year-old hobbyist competing locally, a coloured belt eyeing IBJJF Worlds, a brown belt about to turn pro — there is something useful in that. The mat already knows who you are. Your gym already calls you something. There is some music you actually walk into the warm-up area to, some style your friends rib you about, some little verifiable thing you bring to a roll. Build off that. Not off whoever the algorithm rewarded last month.
McGregor's nickname has outlasted titles, retirements, comebacks, scandals and a five-year layoff because it was, at the root, just true. That is the BJJ lesson hiding inside an unlikely talk-show clip. The Jiu Jitsu names that last are the honest ones.
See you on the mats.
Original report via BJJEE.