Overview
- During the UFC 329 telecast on Saturday night the camera showed four-division boxing champion Shakur Stevenson but the lower-third graphic read “Jalen Williams, Oklahoma City Thunder Guard, 2025 NBA Champion.”
- Play-by-play announcer Jon Anik called out the error live and UFC president Dana White angrily berated his production team at the post-fight press conference, saying the promotion is “the absolute worst to ever do the celebrity thing.”
- Both athletes reacted lightly on social media with Stevenson posting a laughing reply to White’s rant and Jalen Williams posting “ehhh close enough” to a screenshot of the mistaken graphic.
- The gaffe compounds a pattern of celebrity ID mistakes on UFC broadcasts, most notably the 2024 incident when Terence Crawford was mislabeled as Kendrick Lamar, and it comes days after Stevenson signed a multi-fight deal with White’s Zuffa Boxing.
- No formal corrective steps have been announced and the error raises short-term promotional risks for Stevenson’s Zuffa Boxing launch and longer-term reputational questions about UFC’s live-production checks and graphics process.