The ‘Inside the Cage’ documentary follows the story of three British female MMA fighters, Molly McCann, Shanelle Dyer and Cory McKenna. Annie Price follows these fighters and documents their career paths over a number of fights.
The way it’s presented and scripted is interesting due to the way it switches between the three women involved throughout, showing their build up from their training camps to the fight which could potentially change their life and help them progress further to make more money from the sport.
It begins by introducing Molly McCann who is arguably the most prominent figure of the documentary due to her being a lot more experienced and being a UFC fighter. It shows the level of commitment and training that being a UFC fighter entails and follows her to the USA for a UFC fight. I thought this in depth, behind the scenes access was interesting, and showed the physical struggles she went through trying to make weight so that the fight could go ahead and so that she could make the maximum about of money possible.
The next fighter we were introduced too was 18 year old Shanelle Dyer from London. It was filmed showing Dyer speak about her upbringing in a rough area and her talking about wanting to go far in MMA to help her parents move into a bigger house in a nicer area. This really helps the audience to feel for her and her family and gets the audience to really want her to be successful.
Finally, the last person we were introduced to was Cory McKenna from Essex who had only recently taken the sport up but was progressing well and looked as if she was going to go far in the sport. It showed her training and then fighting where she won the fight in 2 minutes.
Overall, the documentary was presented well and showed the struggles that female MMA fighters have to go through with money being hard to come by at the lower ranks and the struggles of having to starve themselves to make weight. It also showed the other side of that with the jubilation of winning fights and making money making all the hard work worth it for the fighters.
AWC SPORT 