A hilarious new video has gone viral online showing a famous football coach completely failing to pronounce the tricky names of several Pokemon creatures. The footage is rapidly making the rounds because the coach brings so much chaotic energy to the table, and highlights a long-running joke among Pokemon fans about how tough these monster identities can be for non-fans to say out loud. The coach's naming fail occurs as he attempts to read the names while opening physical trading cards.
The roster of collectible pocket monsters has grown from the original 151 up to a massive list of over a thousand characters in the last 30 years. Because the mainline Pokemon video games traditionally rely on text boxes instead of voice acting, players are usually left to guess how names sound based on weird puns or words borrowed from other languages. Without an official voice guide in the games, fans and casual players end up guessing, which often leads everyone to place the vocal emphasis on the completely wrong syllables.
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Gruden's Football Energy Meets Pocket Monsters
That brings the focus back to the viral clip featuring Jon Gruden, the former head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Las Vegas Raiders. The energetic coach decided to try his hand at opening a pack of collectible cards, and the results were absolute gold. Gruden is famous in the sports world for his intense, high-octane "Chucky" personality, and he brings that exact same football-field energy to his new hobby. Viewers get to watch the gridiron veteran visibly sweat as he tackles creature titles like Rookidee, Larvitar, Escavalier, and Amoonguss, turning a quiet card-opening session into a high-stakes game-day battle. Some of his best and worst attempts at reading the cards have quickly become meme'd. When pulling Escavalier, the coach confidently barks out, "The S Cavalier!" He also gets tripped up by Amoonguss, bouncing between calling it "Humongous" and "Amoonguss." When looking at a Rookidee card, a confused Gruden tells his crew to "Read me some names," then sighs, "I got Peck." His reactions to other pulls are just as funny, like shouting "I love that guy!" at a Larvitar, scratching his head to ask "Is this Golem?" pronouncing Klink as "Clink," and dubbing a Nimbat as "Nimby."
Gruden isn't the only gridiron standout to become notable in the community. New Orleans Saints running back Jamaal Williams, formerly of the Detroit Lions, has become a viral legend among gamers and anime fans for his passionate defense of the franchise. Famously halting a post-game press conference back in 2024, Williams corrected a reporter who mispronounced the brand as "Pokeman." In another hilarious clip, he recounts a story about a friend who tried to patronize him by intentionally calling various Pokemon by the completely wrong names. Williams goes on to list the ridiculous Pokemon names his friend used, such as calling Bulbasaur an "Onion Turtle."
GameRant Quiz
Messing up these names isn't just a problem for football coaches, though; mainstream media has been tripping over them for decades. A resurfaced 1999 news clip shows a British TV presenter failing miserably to pronounce the name of the franchise's biggest star. The original broadcast was covering a serious story about bright, flashing TV lights making children sick in Japan. But because the game hadn't really taken off in the United Kingdom yet, the BBC news anchor confidently called the iconic electric mouse Pikachu "Pickoocho" on live television, showing just how alien the brand felt to outsiders decades ago.
Even the creators of the games know how confusing their fictional language can get for the global fanbase. The official corporate social accounts shared a helpful pronunciation cheat sheet during the 2025 World Championships to address widespread pronunciation errors. The handy guide gave fans the official way to pronounce tricky monsters like Rayquaza, noting it's supposed to be "RAY-KWAY-ZUH," along with others like Illumise, Farigiraf, Kingambit, and Drapion. Their list proved that even common favorites like Ampharos, Numel, Vibrava, and Regice get totally butchered.
Scratch & Peek
Identify the cover art while scratching off as little foil as possible.
Identify the cover art while scratching off as little foil as possible.
To round out this hilarious language problem, a quick look at common fan slip-ups shows that even long-time players still get ten classic species totally wrong. Fun research into these names shows that early-generation classics like the purple mouse Rattata, the totem-themed Xatu, the three-headed dragon Hydreigon, and the legendary water beast Suicune are constant stumbling blocks for the public. Even the ultimate creator god of the entire universe, Arceus, constantly gets mispronounced as "Ar-see-us" when the official, canonical way to say it is actually "Ar-kee-iss." At this point, it's pretty clear that until the mainline games finally get full voice acting, the bizarre vocabulary of the Pokemon universe will keep humbling absolutely everyone, from everyday players to literal NFL heavyweights.