Hallelujah Gains: UFC's Second Scorecard Blunder in Two Weeks Turns $500 Bet into $252K for One Clever Polymarket Trader

For the second time in two weeks, UFC announcer Bruce Buffer misread a fight's outcome, and this time a Polymarket trader turned the confusion into $252,000 in profit.

It started at UFC 327 in Miami, where American lightweight Chris Padilla was initially declared the winner over MarQuel Mederos—live, in front of millions of viewers. After a commercial break, commentator Jon Adik corrected the record: the fight had actually been scored as a "majority draw."

By that point, Polymarket had already assigned Padilla a 99.9% chance of winning. When the correction dropped, odds swung to 50/50 for both fighters.

One trader—going by JESUSCHRISTISGOOD on Polymarket—had already spotted the discrepancy. "I quickly bought all the shares at 0.1c & waited for the result to be corrected," they explained on X, noting they checked the official scorecard and "after doing some maths," determined judges had erroneously tallied points in favor of Padilla.

The result: a $500 wager on Mederos when he had a 0.1% chance of winning morphed into roughly $252,000—a near 50,000% return.

It's the trader's best-performing bet since joining the platform in January. Meanwhile, bettors who backed Padilla up to the moment his win evaporated from the record are presumably still processing what happened.

The incident underscores a quirk of combat sports betting: athletes' performances aren't the only thing that can move the needle. When a broadcaster misspeaks, odds can whipsaw hard and fast—and someone paying attention can clean up.

Prediction market skeptics were quick to question why the so-called "truth machine" was reflecting the wrong result. Polymarket and chief rival Kalshi have signaled they're refining systems for detecting suspicious activity, while U.S. lawmakers have pushed for tighter restrictions to guard against insider trading and manipulation.

Last month, Polymarket established a Major League Baseball partnership aimed at "protecting the integrity of the game" through a