Conor McGregor UFC 296 Leak: Fact or Fiction? Debunking the Screenshot
Lately the MMA world has been on fire with excitement due to a circulating screenshot from the 'accidentally leaked' UFC 296 event on UFC Fight Pass, which has been making waves on social media.
The screenshot reveals Conor McGregor and Michael Chandler as the planned headliner for the UFC 296 event on December 16.
The UFC 296 'leak'
Even Conor McGregor himself shared the screenshot on his Twitter. Whilst it's great to be optimistic about "The Notorious" returning in 2023, not everything is what it seems with this image.
Debunking the screenshot - Real or Fake?
Visiting the URL in the screenshot takes the user to an error page, which is explainable as the UFC quickly patching the leak, but the URL itself doesn't add up.
Inspected closely, we can see the number '515870', which which indicates that UFC 296 is the 515870th live event on UFC Fight Pass.
UFC Fight Pass organize their URLs in chronological order, so for instance UFC Paris on September 2 is 245758, and --- after some regional events --- UFC 293 on September 9 is 247278. Unless it's just a placeholder URL, the UFC 296 leak takes place hundreds of thousands of events in the future according to the numbers.
If we look at fights, the most recent UFC fight is Max Holloway vs. The Korean Zombie is the 513188th fight uploaded to Fight Pass. UFC 269 is still thousands of URLs ahead.
Another massive factor to suggest the leak being a fake is the ability to inspect element and change the HTML/CSS of a page. Here we have the UFC Paris page, scheduled for September 2:
UFC Paris' event page on UFC Fight Pass
After some easy edits of the page HTML, we've changed the text to be the same as the leak:
UFC Paris is now UFC 296 with some simple edits after inspecting element.
Here it is with the background image removed, see how believable it is?
Removing the background image makes it completely identical to the leak.
The URL can be changed easily as well, by entering the false URL, then pressing escape to cancel the input:
We can even replicate the URL.
And there we have a complete UFC 296 'leak' which can be shared to socials and looks totally legitimate. Now consider the fact there's only one screenshot of the alleged leak, and we have a good case to call it fake.
Wait for an official announcement from the UFC, McGregor, or any reputable source before sharing misinformation online.
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