Johnny Walker had every excuse to get greedy. He showed up to UFC 332 in Salt Lake City as a heavyweight debutant, folded Mick Parkin with a knee in Round 1, and walked out with the kind of clip that usually earns a fighter a call from someone ranked. He went the other way. Walker told talkSPORT he has asked the matchmaker for Marcin Tybura at UFC 335 on December 12, a 40-year-old veteran who has lost three in a row.
I think it’s the right request. I also think it only pays off if the fight goes longer than the Parkin fight did.
What one knee can and can’t tell you
MMA Sucka ran a piece this week under the headline that Walker’s debut still leaves questions, and that framing is fair. A first-round finish answers exactly one thing: the power came with him. Walker is 34 and stands 6ft 6in, so nobody doubted the reach or the length on a knee. What a quick knockout can’t show you is everything that happens after the first few minutes against bigger men. How does he handle a heavyweight leaning on him along the fence? What does his pace look like in Round 3 carrying extra size? What happens the first time somebody in this division lands clean on him and he has to keep working?
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Walker seems to know he hasn’t answered any of that yet. “I want more experience before I take higher-ranked levels of fights, because I believe I have to,” he told talkSPORT. He added that he wants “to feel more of the division, feel the guys that are not very high level yet, or they have more experience.” That’s a fighter thinking about reps instead of rankings, and I wish more people moving up a weight class did the same. The ones who skip straight to the top 10 off one highlight tend to learn their lessons on the canvas.
Why Tybura makes sense on paper
Tybura has been in the UFC since 2016, and his resume reads like a decade of heavyweight history: wins over Andrei Arlovski, Stefan Struve, Serghei Spivac, Ben Rothwell, Greg Hardy and Tai Tuivasa. Walker pointed to exactly that, saying Tybura has been around a long time and “was top 15 for a long time.”
There’s also a neat measuring stick built into this pairing. Tybura’s last win came against Parkin at UFC London in March 2025, and he needed the scorecards to get it. Walker needed one round. That comparison flatters Walker, though it also tells you Tybura is someone who can stay in a fight with a young heavyweight long enough to make it a fight, which is precisely the experience Walker says he wants.
The skid cuts both ways
Then there’s the losing streak, and it isn’t pretty. After the Parkin win, Ante Delija knocked Tybura out. Tyrell Fortune beat him on points in what Bloody Elbow called an upset. Aleksandar Rakić made it three straight at UFC Serbia in August. A fighter at 40 with that run doesn’t get many more chances, and Bloody Elbow framed a Walker fight as Tybura’s possible route back into the top 15.
That’s the part I’d want the matchmaker to think about. A desperate veteran with a decade of heavyweight rounds is a genuinely useful opponent for Walker, because desperate veterans don’t fold early and they know every way to drag a fight into deep water. But the Delija knockout is also on the tape. If Tybura’s chin has slipped, Walker could land another knee in the first five minutes, collect another bonus-worthy clip, and walk into 2027 knowing exactly as much about his heavyweight cardio and durability as he does today.
The downside for Walker is obvious and harsh. Lose to a man on a three-fight skid and the heavyweight move looks like a mistake, no matter how good the Parkin knee was. Win quickly and the questions stay open. The best outcome for Walker’s long-term development is the one fans will like least on paper: Tybura survives the early storm, makes him grind through Round 2, and forces him to solve problems in Round 3. That’s the version of this fight that turns his “I want more experience” line into something real.
What happens next
Walker said he’s already back in training and that the matchmaker told him he’d see what they could do. Tybura hasn’t publicly answered in the sources so far, and Walker himself added the condition that it happens only if Tybura is ready for December. UFC 335 is headlined by Charles Oliveira defending the BMF title against Diego Lopes on December 12. If the booking comes through, I’d take Walker, but I’d be quietly rooting for the fight to see a second horn. One more knee in Round 1 would be fun to watch and would tell us almost nothing.
