Polymarket trader profits $67K thanks to blunder by UFC announcer

Sometimes the best trade might not be about reading a chart but just watching a live fight and trusting your eyes over an announcer’s voice.

That’s essentially what happened on Saturday night when a Polymarket user known as LlamaEnjoyer walked away with roughly $67,000 in profit, from a $676 bet placed in under a minute, after a chaotic mix-up at UFC Seattle handed him one of the more unlikely wins in prediction market history.

The blunder that started it all

The night’s main talking point came during a heavyweight bout between UFC newcomer Tyrell Fortune and No. 8-ranked Marcin Tybura at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle on March 28. 

Fortune, stepping in on short notice for his UFC debut, controlled much of the fight with his wrestling. But when the judges’ scorecards were read, veteran octagon announcer Bruce Buffer called the winner as Tybura. 

Fortune, believing he had lost, began walking toward the back. Officials quickly intervened as the error became clear. Fortune was called back into the cage, and Buffer apologized before reading the correct result, a unanimous decision win for Fortune, scored 30-27, 29-28 and 29-28.

What followed was described as pure chaos, Tybura stood alone in the cage as confusion swept through the arena, and officials scrambled to sort out the situation before the correction was made. 

For Fortune, it was a deflating way to experience what should have been a career milestone moment. For one sharp-eyed Polymarket trader watching from afar, it was something else entirely: an opening.

A 100x return in under 60 seconds

LlamaEnjoyer, who goes by Verrissimus on X, was watching the fight live and says he suspected immediately that something was off when Buffer made the call. With Polymarket shares for Fortune dropping to one cent following the erroneous announcement, LlamaEnjoyer moved quickly, putting $676 into Fortune shares at that price, moments before Buffer corrected himself and declared Fortune the actual winner. 

The result: a payout of $67,608. Nearly a 100x return on a bet that was open for less than a minute.

That’s not all, there’s another twist in the tale. The trader said he had nearly placed $100,000 on Tybura at 99 cents, which would have been a catastrophic loss, before something made him pause. “There’s no way Tybura won that fight,” he wrote afterward. He pulled back, flipped his position, and cleaned up.

“Cancelled my order, scooped up 1c shares instead. The UFC corrected the winner seconds later. Easiest 100x ever,” he said. He also noted that he had placed the trade before any commentator had officially flagged the error, meaning the entire window from Buffer’s wrong call to his confirmed bet was no more than 50 seconds.

It’s the kind of trade that’s almost impossible to replicate deliberately, but it does say something real about how prediction markets respond to live events. Odds can collapse and spike in real time based on information, or misinformation, that spreads faster than human oversight can catch up.

Meanwhile, prediction markets have become one of the fastest-growing spaces in crypto, with trading volumes crossing $10.4 billion so far in March alone, a tenfold jump compared to the same period last year. Over 865,000 users have placed bets on platforms like Polymarket, Kalshi and Opinion in March, across everything from sports and politics to financial results and culture.

The LlamaEnjoyer trade will likely be cited for a while as a case study in just how quickly these markets move, and how thin the line is between a six-figure loss and a six-figure gain when the information edge lasts less than a minute.

As for Fortune, he said after the fight that despite questioning the result in the moment, he was “so upset” with his own performance. He noted that with just two weeks’ notice, he felt he did a decent job but wanted to bring a better showing next time.The win moved him to 18-3 in MMA.