Johnny Walker has climbed to No. 8 in the UFC heavyweight rankings, and he has already crossed two names off his road to a title shot. The Brazilian said he won’t fight Alexander Volkov, a top-five contender and longtime training partner, and he won’t fight his brother Valter Walker, who sits at No. 11.
On Volkov, Walker kept it simple in an interview with Home of Fight. “We will never talk about this bout. I have no interest in fighting him,” he said. He called the Russian “a good guy and a good training partner” and then did the matchmaking math out loud: “There’s two guys in the division that I don’t need to fight. That’s two less that I don’t need to worry about.”
The Valter refusal is more complicated, because the brothers have been feuding in public. Walker told The Ariel Helwani Show that “Since the China fight, he said so many bad things about my mom and my wife online,” and added that it’s “not a good thing to do for clicks.” He still shut the door on a sibling fight. “I miss him I’ll never fight my brother,” Walker said. “He’s a good man inside. He just needs some discipline.”
How he got here
Walker, 34, from Rio de Janeiro, left light heavyweight after a split decision loss to Dominick Reyes. He’s 2-0 since moving up. The second win came this past Saturday at the Meta Apex, where he knocked out Waldo Cortes-Acosta in a short-notice UFC Vegas 124 main event. That jumped him four spots into the top 10.
He has been angling for bigger things for a while. Before the Cortes-Acosta fight, Walker offered himself as the backup for Ciryl Gane vs. Josh Hokit at UFC 334. That booking already annoyed a lot of people, because plenty of observers felt Volkov had earned the title shot more than Hokit. Bloody Elbow describes Volkov as the division’s No. 1-ranked contender and a seven-time main event star.
Valter, meanwhile, is riding five straight wins and sits three spots behind his brother. That’s close enough that a matchmaker would normally start doodling the poster.
Sal’s take
I respect the loyalty, and I’m doing the arithmetic anyway. Heavyweight is the thinnest division the UFC has, so taking two of the top 11 off the board does real work. One of those two is the guy a lot of people think should be fighting for the belt right now. If Volkov gets his shot and wins, Walker has a friend wearing the gold he’s chasing. If Volkov loses and stays parked near the top, Walker has to route around a contender everyone else has to go through. The Valter part I’ll never argue with, because nobody needs to see Thanksgiving settled over three rounds at the Apex. The Volkov part is a calendar problem waiting to happen. For now Walker is 2-0 at heavyweight with a fresh knockout and a short list of willing opponents. Gane and Hokit headline UFC 334, and he already raised his hand for that one.
