Conor got fraud checked though. Topuria actually has the skills to keep on going and he's only 27.
Maybe Ilia can keep winning and eventually become bigger than Jon or Adesanya in social media followers. But he would need to become a massive Icon, part time amazing actor, and also a platinum selling artist to even sniff the level of someone like Conor lol. This is assuming he will stay active and have the right dancing partners, which is always the hard part.
The gap is so ridiculously big, it would be absolutely incredible if he could even get to 15 million for an MMA fighter. Today there are over 2 billion users on Instagram, when Conor was getting big in 2015, there was roughly half a billion. So even with 4X the amount of potential exposure for fighters today, and an all-time great talent in Ilia, he is still severely behind and has virtually zero chance of getting to 25 million, let alone catching Conor.
The thing about Conor is the losses actually helped him, the two Diaz fights are some of the most intense and popular fights of all time. The loss to Mayweather was a blessing, he got to fight against arguably the greatest PPV seller of all time (
of all the combat PPV's ever sold, Mayweather was involved in 4 of the top 5). The Khabib fight brought about a whole new eastern demographic that we'd never seen before.
The only reason Khabib even has 30 million followers is
BECAUSE HE FOUGHT CONOR, before that fight he had around 6-7 million followers with zero title defenses! He was at the right place at the right time when Conor was away from the sport, he capitalized and just so happened to be one of the top 15 MMA fighters of all time. Khabib was lucky enough to get the rub from Conor but also Mayweather as well, two of the top selling fighters ever. Anyone from that period remembers the talk about a Khabib vs Mayweather boxing fight, Khabib was able to get himself into those conversations due to the sheer timing of the whole ordeal.