UFC Shanghai promised a night of high stakes matches at the Oriental Sports Center, and while the action inside the arena lived up to expectations, fans watching from home spent much of the evening fighting a different battle: keeping their broadcast on screen.
Paramount+ subscribers ran into the same problems that have followed the platform through much of the year, with repeated interruptions cutting into the viewing experience almost as soon as the main card got going.
Journalist Jed Meshew was among the first to sound off, posting on X as he tried to catch the action from overseas. “I wake up at 3am to watch some fights and then Paramount+ crashes,” he wrote. “Inauspicious.”
Meshew’s frustration didn’t end there. Shortly after, he reported that his feed had gone down a second time, and when it came back, it wasn’t in English anymore. “After crashing again, Paramount is now playing the Portuguese str3am for me,” he wrote. “Really well-oiled machine over there.”
He wasn’t alone. Other viewers jumped into the conversation to share their own headaches with the broadcast.
One fan wrote, “Crashed again for me and can’t get the English version to play.”
Another tied the technical trouble to a separate gripe entirely, referencing recent reports of a subscription price increase: “@paramountplus lots of crashes, & a reported rate hike.”
That price hike is real. Paramount+ reportedly adjusted its rates in early January, just ahead of UFC 324 becoming the first event under the new pricing. According to sources, the basic plan, once $59.99 a year, now runs $89.99, while Premium climbed from $119.99 to $139.99. For fans paying more and still getting knocked offline mid-bout, the timing has not been kind to the platform’s reputation.
Interestingly, not everyone had a rough night. One viewer noted that they had leaned on the Portuguese broadcast for a good chunk of the year simply because it held up better than the English feed.
“I’ve watched the Portuguese feed probably 20% of the time this summer because it crashes way less. Porra!” they wrote.
This is far from an isolated incident for Paramount+. UFC 330 ran into similar trouble on PlayStation 5, and Roku users dealt with glitches and buffering during that same card. Before that, UFC 326 brought its own round of complaints, with some viewers describing their screens going completely black during the main event between Max Holloway and Charles Oliveira.
Even Demetrious Johnson, the former flyweight champion, publicly criticized the broadcast partner over the recurring issues.
Broadcasting hiccups were only half of the story in Shanghai. The production also handed fans a fresh batch of on-screen errors, the kind that have become an odd running theme at UFC events this year.
One eagle-eyed viewer flagged a graphic on Fig ht Pass that placed Canadian fighter Cam Nelson, who opened the card against Meng Ding, as hailing from Brazil. “Just watching the first fight on Fig ht Pass and the on-screen graphic says this Canadian lad is from somewhere like Prince John Island, Brazil,” the fan wrote.
That turned out to be just the opening act. By the time Xiaonan Yan stepped out for her co-main event bout against Denise Gomes, the location graphic read “Beijing, Poland,” a mashup that got nothing right.
Yan was born in Shenyang, in China’s Liaoning province, and now competes out of Sacramento, California.
More mistakes followed as fans combed through the broadcast. Hunan, an actual Chinese province, was displayed as part of Brazil. Tokyo, the capital of Japan, somehow ended up placed in Florida. And in what many are calling the most glaring error of the night, Shanghai itself, the host city of the entire event, was listed as being located in Texas.
Even UFC star Umar Numagomedov was shown representing Poland.
The graphics team’s troubles didn’t stop at geography. One fan pointed out that Sean Woodson’s name appeared twice in his own tale of the tape. “They also double-layered Sean Woodson in the Tale of the Tape. Graphics department is laaaacking,” they wrote.
Some viewers speculated that automation might be behind the recurring slip-ups. “I reckon they’re using AI; they were f-ked last week too,” one fan wrote. That theory isn’t without basis.
Dana White has previously acknowledged that his production team incorporates artificial intelligence into its content, a shift that has coincided with a noticeable uptick in on-screen mix-ups.
This isn’t the first time White has had to answer for his broadcast team’s mistakes, either. Just last month, the promotion labeled boxing champion Shakur Stevenson as NBA player Jalen Williams during a package, a blunder that set White off.
“I mean, it’s just absolutely crazy,” he said. “We are the absolute worst to ever do the celebrity thing. When we put celebrities up, we are the worst. I just had this f**king debate in the back with my guys while I was screaming at everybody back there, and they said, ‘No, soccer’s worse. Soccer shows the people, and they don’t put up any graphics. Oh no. We put up f**king graphics and put the wrong guy’s name on it! We win. We’re the worst EVER to f**king do it.'”
Given how forcefully White has reacted to similar mistakes in the past, it’s a safe bet the production team will be hearing from him again.
Between the buffering, the dropped feeds, and the graphics that couldn’t keep continents straight, UFC Shanghai delivered a night that fans will remember for more than what happened in the cage. Song Yadong closed the show with a signature win in front of his home crowd, and Umar Nurmagomedov absorbed the first knockout loss of his career.
