Johnny Walker isn’t done saving fight cards. One night after he knocked out Waldo Cortes-Acosta in the UFC Vegas 124 main event, Walker told MMA Fighting’s Guilherme Cruz he wants to be the backup for the heavyweight title fight between Ciryl Gane and Josh Hokit at UFC 334 on Nov. 12.
That card is at Madison Square Garden. Walker fought at the Meta APEX on Nov. 7. Less than a week between them, and he’s raising his hand anyway.
“If someone drops out of the title fight next week or gets injured, they can put me in there too [laughs],” Walker said.
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He was laughing. He also wasn’t kidding. Walker, who lives in Las Vegas and trains at Porrada Training Center, said he’s willing to travel to New York “if [the UFC] pays for my flight.” He told Cruz he came out of Saturday without any injuries, just some damage from a long night of eating shots. “My face is just a little swollen because I ate a lot of punches, right?” he said.
How he got here
Walker and Cortes-Acosta took the Vegas 124 headliner on eight days’ notice after Sean Brady vs. Gabriel Bonfim fell apart. Walker admitted he wasn’t fully trained for it. He finished the job in the third round with a head kick and punches, making him the first man to stop Cortes-Acosta in MMA. Sergei Pavlovich, Alexander Volkov and Curtis Blaydes all beat Cortes-Acosta in the UFC. None of them put him away.
Walker gave a pretty candid scouting report on what he felt in there. “I felt his hands were heavy, but not explosive,” he said, adding that the punches knocked him off balance without ever really hurting him.
The win makes Walker 2-0 since moving up to heavyweight, with two knockouts and bonuses to go with them.
The fight he wants to crash is a big one. Gane is defending the belt after knocking out Alex Pereira in June at UFC White House, the same night Hokit stopped Derrick Lewis to earn his shot. Walker thinks Hokit has a real chance if he leans on his wrestling, since he sees Gane as a class above on the feet.
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Plan B
If nobody pulls out, Walker wants to come back in February or March 2027 and win one more before a title shot. He even picked a name. Should Hokit lose to Gane, Walker would happily take him next, and he wasn’t shy about why. “He’s also light, he’s not that big, so it would be a perfect fight for me,” Walker said. He figures his jiu-jitsu handles Hokit on the mat and his hands handle him standing.
If the call is for the belt, though, the February plan goes out the window. “If it’s for the title, I’ll do something crazy and fight [next week] anyway,” he said.
My take: the UFC should take him up on it and buy the man a seat on a plane. A swollen face is still a face, and a guy who just went three rounds and finished somebody nobody else could finish is a better insurance policy than whoever’s sitting on a couch in Jersey. Gane and Hokit weigh in this week. If either one stumbles, Walker already has his bag packed.