- Several profanity-laden messages about McGregor’s partner, Dee Devlin, were posted to Usman’s Twitter account
- Irishman ‘sceptical’ of hacking – ‘it had all the hallmarks of that little weasel, Ali Abdelaziz’
Kamaru Usman claimed his Twitter account was hacked on Saturday night after several derogatory tweets were posted, directed at Conor McGregor.
But the Irishman wasn't buying it, to say the least.
"I'd be sceptical of that," he said at UFC 246 post-event press conference, after smashing Donald Cerrone in 40 seconds. "Because one came through early and it had all the hallmarks of that little f****** weasel, Ali (Abdelaziz, Usman's manager).
"They give him control of the accounts. He had Frankie's (Edgar) account. He had Henry's (Cejudo) account. This has been going on for a while. He gets it then writes something through their thing. I've been in discussions with some of these athletes that come on board and whatever, help them out and that. And I know exactly what happened."
The profanity-laden tweets, several of which were about McGregor's partner Dee Devlin, were eventually deleted.
"The way the first one was written, I knew exactly where it came from. And then all of a sudden a little bit heavier ones," McGregor said. "And then it became a hack job, so whatever. I don't know what the f*** is going on tonight. It was a bit of a weird night wasn't it? The two boys (Usman and Jorge Masvidal) doing mad stuff. All the best to them."
Welterweight champion Usman, who was cageside for the fight, apologised for the incident in a backstage media scrum.
"Yeah, it's kinda sad we live in a world where people actually do stuff like that," he said. "But it is what it is. It's part of life now. Obviously that wasn't me.
"Whoever's tweeting those things, come on. Hopefully you got your 10 seconds of fame. But it's not me, obviously that's not my character. He was saying some pretty outlandish stuff."
UFC president Dana White said as soon as the tweets " which were posted just hours before McGregor's fight " were brought to his attention, he contacted McGregor.
"I said he got hacked so don't say anything, don't do anything," White said. "Usman and Ali are sitting right in front of where Conor comes out and does the thing.
"So 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."
McGregor's bad blood with Abdelaziz stems back to the build-up to his acrimonious submission defeat by lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov " another of Abdelaziz's clients " in October 2018
"I don't think it was Usman," McGregor added. "I don't care, man. I crucially don't care. It just had all the hallmarks of your man, that's it. He's done it in the past multiple times. I saw one originally, then Dana sent a message that this never happened, but I didn't see any of the rest of them, just the first one.
"And the first one had all the hallmarks of your man logging in and doing his thing. With Ali, the clients he represents, this has happened for years. I've been dealing with this for a long time so I know exactly what the source is. But whatever."
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