Buffer Brothers Build Empire

A story about how Bruce Buffer discovered Michael Buffer was his half-brother, leading to a successful business partnership managing Michael's boxing announcer career.

Bruce Buffer was watching a boxing event and noticed the announcer Michael Buffer had the same last name. He found it interesting since he'd never met another Buffer before. After looking in the yellow pages and finding no other Buffers, he discovered Michael grew up half a mile away from him.

While driving with his father one day, Bruce mentioned this coincidence. His father casually revealed, "Yeah, I think that's your brother." He explained that before marrying Bruce's mom, he had another son. They confirmed they were indeed half-brothers.

Bruce then approached Michael, who was already a successful boxing announcer, and offered to be his business manager. Bruce's first move was getting Michael to trademark his catchphrase "Let's get ready to rumble." They started licensing it for merchandise, video games, and other media.

The partnership proved incredibly successful - Michael Buffer has made $400 million in his career, mostly from licensing the trademark. Later, Michael helped Bruce get into announcing, where Bruce became the voice of UFC with his own catchphrase "It's time." The business relationship became so valuable that UFC even cuts out Bruce's catchphrase from old fight recordings to avoid paying royalties.