During a recent appearance on The Pivot Podcast, UFC president Dana White acknowledged a recurring problem within his organization’s production team: the repeated misidentification of Black celebrities during live events, most notably boxing star Shakur Stevenson.
The conversation was sparked when host Ryan Clark made a lighthearted pitch to White about filling an opening role.
“I want to apply for the job of being the person that can actually identify the celebrity before we put them on the screen,” Clark said.
White’s response was immediate: “You’re hired.”
What followed was White opening up about one of his biggest frustrations behind the scenes. He explained that the UFC is currently undergoing a production overhaul, but admitted the celebrity identification issue has gone unresolved for far too long.
“I just feel like we’ve been so bad at this for so long,” he said.
The situation came to a head when Stevenson, a world boxing champion whom White had brought out for a high-profile appearance, was shown on screen with a graphic identifying him as an Oklahoma City basketball player.
White described his reaction plainly: “I pay all this money for Shakur Stevenson. Bring him out. He’s doing all this PR and we put him on as a OKC basketball player. I haven’t been that mad or freaked out that bad in a very long time.”
The hosts pointed out that the mistake had happened twice, and both times the person misidentified was a Black man. That detail prompted White to offer a blunt take.
“And two Black guys. I think I need to throw a Black guy in the truck or something. I don’t know what is going on there,” White said.
Clark agreed, adding, “They might identify him a little better.”
Clark also pointed to the particular absurdity of the Stevenson mix-up. “The other problem is though, Shakur is like 5’8. You know what I mean? To say that he’s a world champion basketball player, that for sure ain’t heavy.”
Despite the frustration, White did not direct blame entirely at his team.
“I freaked out that night, man. I haven’t been that mad, especially at people that work for me in a very long time. And my production team is the best in the business. But we cannot figure out the celebrity thing,” he said.
He did find one upside in the chaos, noting that his visible anger over the error actually drew more attention to who Stevenson really was.
“It got more attention that I was pissed off about it,” he stated. “Now people realized that it was Shakur Stevenson and not an OKC basketball player.”
