QUEBEC CITY – UFC President Dana White says the homophobic slurs posted on light heavyweight champion Jon Jones’ Instagram account were a result of him being hacked.
“He got hacked,” White told MMAjunkie. “Originally when I found out he was being hacked, I was like, ‘What, are we all going to say stupid stuff and then say we got hacked?’ But if you look at his timeline, first of all he rarely posts anything or responds with comments on Instagram – and he got hacked.”
The world of social media blew up on Tuesday when a Swedish MMA fan posted screenshots with comments from Jones’ official Instagram account on several photos.
Essentially all of the comments were homophobic in nature, which caused uproar within the MMA community.
Jones later stated he had lost his phone and had his account hacked. While there’s no way to actually prove the story one way or another, White says the situation is a non-issue from his perspective.
“[The hackers] got in there and they changed his password,” White said. “Like 11 people had his password that surround him and we got that squashed and taken care of yesterday.”
With Jones (19-1 MMA, 13-1 UFC) scheduled to defend his 205-pound championship against Glover Teixiera (22-2 MMA, 5-0 UFC) next week at UFC 172, there was a fear the social media scandal would take some of the attention away from an important title fight.
White feels that’s not the case at all, especially after Jones made the claim he was hacked, which, considering the situation, was enough to clear his name in the eyes of the UFC boss.
“There wasn’t really a reaction to it,” White said. “Once he had put out that he was hacked – all you gotta do is read his timeline and the things he was saying. He was hacked.”