UFC star Conor McGregor could lose over four million of his Twitter followers following Elon Musk's mission to eliminate fake accounts from the platform.
Former two-weight champion McGregor, 34, is the most popular UFC fighter on social media, boasting 9.6 million Twitter followers and 46.2 million Instagram followers. But his Twitter followers could fall to under six million in a recent effort by Musk, who took over the social media site last month, as the new CEO is setting his sights on eradicating spam accounts.
According to a study run by Gambling.com on the fake follower audit SparkToro, McGregor almost 4.1million of McGregor's Twitter followers are spam accounts. Former UFC champion Anderson Silva has almost three million fake followers whilst Jon Jones also has just over one million spam accounts following him.
Former bantamweight champion Cody Garbrandt is the UFC fighter with the highest percentage of fake followers, as 48 per cent of his followers are from spam accounts. Several other big UFC stars such as Khabib Nurmagomedov, Nate Diaz and Israel Adesanya were all found to have hundreds of thousands of fake followers.
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The business tycoon Musk has already started his tweaks to Twitter by changing the verification process as users can now pay for a blue tick on the platform through 'Twitter Blue', which costs $7.99 a month. Musk outlined his plans to eliminate fake accounts from Twitter in April when he tweeted: "If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying! And authenticate all real humans."
McGregor has been more active on social media than in the cage this year as fans have become concerned by many of his Twitter posts, pleading with the Irishman to make a return to fighting. McGregor is now just two spots away from exiting the UFC rankings after the latest update moved him to No.14 at lightweight.
Having not fought in almost 18 months, McGregor is expected to make his return next year and will likely fight at welterweight after bulking up to 190lb during his time off. 'Notorious' teased a comeback by writing "the Mac is back" on Instagram last week and UFC boss Dana White told Mirror Fighting of his return: "He's been posting videos of himself training and he's just done filming a movie. He definitely wants to come back next year."
The earliest McGregor will be eligible to fight is May, as he has not been drug tested by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) for the entirety of this year. UFC fighters are required to enrol in the USADA testing for a minimum of six months before they are eligible to compete.
