The September 14 UFC 306 broadcast featured a seriously hilarious identity crisis mistake. Boxing world champion Terence Crawford, seated cageside at The Sphere in Las Vegas, was mistaken for Kendrick Lamar and publicly addressed on live TV as a “Grammy Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning musician.”
Viewers immediately jumped on the meme train and started giving funny reactions to the incident on social media. Former UFC champion Aljamain Sterling also participated In a series of hilarious exchanges, tweeting: “Terence Crawford turned into Kendrick Lamar tonight.” Bellator middleweight champion Johnny Ablen was heartbroken to see the mess on TV and shared the scene on X: “Yo they mistakenly thought Bud Crawford was Kendrick Lamar (crying emoji).”
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Crawford also laughed off the faux pas on Instagram and showed the rapper some love by tagging him on a screengrab that also had Lamar’s diss track against Drake, “Euphoria,” playing. Crawford is also ironically named in the six-minute rap battle song, as Lamar says: “He’s Terence Thornton, I’m Terence Crawford, yeah, I’m whoopin feet.”
UFC CEO Dana White responds
When asked in a post-event interview if he was expecting any messages from Kendrick Lamar and Terence Crawford, UFC CEO Dana White casually stated that he had spoken to Crawford about the identity crisis blunder.
“That was pretty bad… He looked like Kendrick Lamar… Let’s not bullshit,” a nervous White responded with a laugh. “So when I said we had a flawless production tonight, I take it back.”
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Netizens react to the Kendrick Lamar-Terence Crawford mess
As the TV screengrab spread like wildfire on X (formerly Twitter), Lamar quickly began trending on the platform. Netizens laughingly suggested that someone was definitely getting fired after the major blunder. Some even joked that this “intentional trolling” was planned beforehand, given that Lamar had referred to himself as Crawford in his Drake diss track earlier this year.
“Terence Crawford has been portrayed as Kendrick Lamar in the UFC forever. He wasn’t confused about anything, you guys just don’t listen,” one user joked.
Another X user echoed the sentiment, writing, “Terence Crawford may not be Kendrick Lamar, but Kendrick Lamar is Terence Crawford
Many others agreed that the UFC’s mistake was “definitely a reference to Lamar’s “Euphoria.” Conversely, some questioned, “How could a company as big as the UFC make this mistake?”
Another person chimed in, “Maybe someone thought Terrence is his real name and Kendrick is his rap name.” Yet another netizen was outraged at how people were ignoring the ridiculousness of the situation, pointing out that it was all part of the plan: “Y’all would actually deny that the grass is green because how could that be a mistake?”
