One of the most memorable moments of Saturday night’s historic UFC 205 was the strange drama surrounding the result of Tyron Woodley and Stephen Thompson’s welterweight title fight. To recount, Octagon announcer Bruce Buffer first announced the result as a split decision win for Tyron Woodley. In the subsequent moments, Buffer announced that the fight was actually a majority draw.
In a recent interview with TMZ, Buffer gave his take on this hectic moment. Watch this interview at the top of this post, and keep reading for a transcription of it.
“Well you know, the commission, they’re gods,” Buffer explained to TMZ. “It’s like a policeman, you can’t question the commission right? My job is, remember, I’m the messenger. I don’t add up the scores, I don’t do that. But at the same time, I also learned that if there’s ever a question, I’m going to bring it up at that point.”
“When the commission handed me the scores, they wrote down split decision and they wrote down the scores, and then I went up into the Octagon. And then when I got into the Octagon, right as I was about to start – and I asked them before I went up, I said ‘are you sure’, and they said ‘yes’ – all of the sudden they called me and I had to go back down again. I said ‘did you change it,’ and they said ‘no, no, no, it’s all fine, go back up again.’ So then I went back up again. I will go ahead and share this responsibility, but at the same time after I announced it, then they called me back down because they had to have me announce it the proper way, which was of course a majority draw.”
Buffer then compared this incident to Steve Harvey’s infamous slip-up when announcing the winner of Miss Universe 2015.
“Thank God I didn’t announce Stephen Thompson as the winner – that would have been kind of a Steve Harvey moment. For me to have to walk out during an announcement, walk back in, be called back to walk out again, walk back in, and to look at Tyron Woodley… he turns around and I felt bad because he’s like ‘no, no,’ thinking I was going to announcement than it came out…”
“I did not announce the wrong winner, that I did not do,” he said. “We’ll give Steve [Harvey] all the credit for that.”
What did you think of this chaotic moment at UFC 205? Sound off, PENN Nation!