There’s a whole bunch of people who thought they just met UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor in Santa Monica, and you can excuse them for thinking that because McGregor is currently just a stone’s throw away in Las Vegas preparing for his August 26th superfight against Floyd Mayweather. But in reality, they just ran into Islam Badurgov, the most convincing Conor McGregor impersonator we’ve ever seen (and we’ve seen a few in our day).
Badurgov is a Russian body builder and occasional YouTube pranker who’s been told he looks like Conor McGregor when he wears his sunglasses so much he decided to have a little fun with the resemblance. He had all of McGregor’s tattoos accurately stenciled onto his body and hit the Santa Monica pier with Conor’s trademark swagger to see how many people would fall for the disguise. And considering he looked nearly identical (if a bit beefier) to the MMA superstar, he soon had crowds of people chasing him down to get pictures.
It’s pretty impressive what a difference a good pair of shades will do to turn someone into McGregor. Pre-sunglasses:
Post sunglasses:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BXAFLrxl-09/?taken-by=badurgovislam
Badurgov could knock over a bank done up like this and McGregor might have a hard time dissuading the police that he wasn’t involved. Of course, Conor doesn’t need to rob anyone these days. He’s currently #24 on the Forbes Highest Paid Athletes list and on the verge of making over $100 million off his fight with Floyd Mayweather at the end of August. Whether we’ll consider the whole thing a heist once it’s over is another matter all together.
