LAS VEGAS – UFC president Dana White said that a string of vulgar, racist and hateful tweets from Kamaru Usman’s Twitter during UFC 246 was the result of his account being hacked.
In the middle of Saturday night’s event, Usman’s social media lit up with a series of disturbing messages. They were originally targeted at Conor McGregor but slowly expanded into something much worse, including screen shots of the UFC welterweight champions bank account.
White said he was alerted of the situation while it was ongoing, and his first action was to contact McGregor and make sure there was no reaction from his end.
“I called Conor,” White told reporters, including MMA Junkie, post-fight at UFC 246. “I said, ‘He got hacked. So don’t say anything, don’t do anything.’ Usman and Ali (Abdelaziz) are sitting right in front of where Conor comes out and does the thing. So the first thing I did was tell Conor that, and he didn’t believe it. He doesn’t believe he got hacked. But, we had no problems, so.”
When McGregor (22-4 MMA, 10-2 UFC) was asked about the situation during his media session following his first-round TKO of Donald Cerrone in the UFC 246 headliner at T-Mobile Arena, he confirmed White’s comments about being skeptical of the hacker situation. “The Notorious” has a disdain for Usman’s manager, Abdelaziz of Dominance MMA, and thinks that’s where the tweets could’ve come from.
“I’m pretty skeptical of that,” McGregor said. “I’m skeptical of that, because one came through early, and it had all the hallmarks of that little (expletive) weasel Ali. They give him control of the accounts. He had Frankie (Edgar’s) account, he had Henry (Cejudo’s) account. This has been going on a while. He gets it and write something through their thing. I’ve been in discussions with some of these athletes, as well, to try to come on board and help them out with that. Then the way it was written, I knew exactly where it came from, and now all of a sudden a little bit heavier ones then it became a hack job. Whatever. I don’t know what the (expletive) is going on tonight. It’s been a weird night. The two guys doing the mad stuff. I don’t know.”
When pressed further about the bizarre situation, McGregor clarified he didn’t think it was Usman (16-1 MMA, 11-0 UFC) specifically. He said he doesn’t know the facts but expressed doubts about the legitimacy of it being a hacker.
“I don’t think it was Usman,” McGregor said. “I don’t care, man. I don’t care. I actually don’t care. It just had all the hallmarks of a man that’s done that multiple times. I didn’t even see it originally – I saw one originally, and Dana and sent it to me and said, ‘This is what happened.’ I didn’t see what happened; I just saw the rest of them. The first one had all the hallmarks of a man logging in and doing his thing with clients that he represents. This has happened since years. I’m talking like – I’ve been dealing with this multiple times. Whatever.”
Usman, for his part, denied any involvement during a scrum with reporters backstage at UFC 246 (via Twitter):
“It’s sad we live in a world where people actually do stuff like that,” Usman said. “It is what it is. It’s part of life now. Obviously that wasn’t me. Whoever is tweeting those things, I mean, come on. Hopefully you got your 10 seconds of fame. That’s not me. That’s obviously not my character. He was saying some outlandish stuff.”
