Ring announcer mistakingly names wrong winner of Cherneka Johnson-Nina Hughes bout in wild scene

Cherneka Johnson (R) beat Nina Hughes on Sunday in Australia, but not without first believing she had lost. (Mikey Williams/Top Rank)

The announcer at RAC Arena was not having a good day on Sunday.

The scene was reminiscent of when Steve Harvey crowned the wrong Miss Universe in 2015, or of the “Moonlight” debacle at the Oscars in 2017. It was rough.

Cherneka Johnson beat reigning WBA bantamweight champion Nina Hughes on Sunday in Perth, Australia, via a majority decision. But when ring announcer Dan Hennessey, a former United States Marine, stepped up to announce her as the winner, he completely butchered the delivery. That made for a very confusing scene in the ring.

Hennessey misread the scorecards when making his announcement, and he accidentally declared Hughes the winner. Suddenly, it was her arm in the air and the 41-year-old started celebrating.

Pretty quickly, though, he corrected his mistake as if nothing had happened. He read the scores again, apparently correct the second time, and Johnson’s arm was lifted in the air. That left Hughes and the announcers on the broadcast incredibly confused.

Just watch the scene unfold:

ESPN’s Joe Tessitore erupted on the “absolute clown show garbage amateur hour” announcing from Hennessey, too, while trying to explain to viewers in the U.S. what had actually happened.

Joe Tess unloads on the “absolute clown show garbage amateur hour” ring announcer and gets the corrected results pic.twitter.com/d1czlIp3B1

— CJ Fogler account may or may not be notable (@cjzero) May 12, 2024

The error wasn’t Hennesseey’s only one of the night, either. He messed up the scorecards for the Pedro Guevara-Andrew Moloney fight earlier in the night, too. The problem for him is apparently nothing new.

Even though she was briefly robbed of the celebration, and just about everyone involved was confused, Johnson got her win. In theory, that’s all that really matters.