During Saturday's (Sept. 14) UFC 306 in Las Vegas, ESPN mislabeled Terence Crawford as Kendrick Lamar. The incident ended up going viral online, especially since the world champ was name-dropped on the Compton lyricist’s "euphoria" earlier in the year.
Crawford laughed off the mix-up on social media but shared more of his thoughts during a Monday (Sept. 16) interview with TMZ. “It was funny because everybody was texting me, hitting me up and talking about, ‘He's Terrence Thornton, I'm Terence Crawford, yeah, I'm whoopin' feet,’” he explained while referencing the aforementioned track. “I was just thinking about the song, and I wasn’t in tune with the broadcast [that] called me Kendrick Lamar.”
“I took a little chuckle at it,” the boxer continued. “It was intentionally done for laughter because how can you get us mixed up? All in all, it was funny to me.” The Nebraska native went on to say that while he, unfortunately, didn’t hear from Lamar regarding the situation, being compared to the Super Bowl LIX’s headliner wasn’t the worst thing.
“That was pretty bad,” Dana White claimed in a post-conference interview. “He did kind of look like Kendrick Lamar. Let’s not f**k around. So, when I said we had a flawless production tonight, I take that back.”
It’s been a relatively busy year for the Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers creator. He joined forces with Metro Boomin and Future for March’s “Like That,” which clinched his first No. 1 of the year on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Fast forward to May, after trading shots with Drake on several records, “Not Like Us” earned Lamar his second chart-topper in the span of a few months.
While the two rappers’ beef has seemingly died down since then, Lamar dropped an untitled song via his Instagram on Sept. 11 — coincidently around the same time as the MTV Video Music Awards. “I think it's time to watch the party die / This s**t done got too wicked to apologize,” he declared on the Sounwave-produced cut.