Johnny Walker Took a UFC Vegas 124 Main Event Two Fighters Turned Down. He Is Giving Up 23 Pounds.
The main event the UFC is putting on television Saturday night is the third version of the plan, and it is the most interesting one.
Waldo Cortes-Acosta fights Johnny Walker at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, with prelims at 5 p.m. ET and the main card at 8 on Paramount+. The card was supposed to be headlined by Gabriel Bonfim against Sean Brady. Brady got hurt, the welterweight main event died, and the UFC went looking for a heavyweight fight it could book in under two weeks.
Two fighters said no first
Cortes-Acosta took it on roughly a week and a half of notice. Per Simon Head of UFC.com, two fighters turned the bout down before Walker accepted it.
Walker is a career light heavyweight. He moved up on Oct. 3 at UFC 332 and stopped Mick Parkin by TKO at 3:35 of the first round, which is the whole of his heavyweight record in this run. At Friday’s weigh-ins he was 239 pounds. Cortes-Acosta was 262. All 28 fighters on the card made weight.
Giving up 23 pounds to the sixth-ranked heavyweight in the UFC’s own rankings on ten days of preparation is reckless, and that is exactly why the fight is worth watching. Walker has spent his career making bad decisions in exciting ways, and this is the biggest one available to him.
Cortes-Acosta is tired of being wrestled
Cortes-Acosta, 35, is 17-4 and arrives off back-to-back decision losses to Alexander Volkov and Curtis Blaydes. He blames the way those fights were fought.
“One was running for their life, which is what happened with Volkov,” he told Head. Of Blaydes: “he tried to hold me down and get points for control and everything like that, and he was running a lot, too. This is why I want to make a change and make it my best in there.”
He was not precious about the opponent switch. “It doesn’t matter to me. If any people want to fight me, I want to fight them, too, no matter what,” he said. He also declined the hero framing. “The guys, they say, ‘Oh, you saved the card,’ but I don’t think that, because it’s an opportunity, you know?”
His plan is not subtle. “I need to cut off the ring, that’s the first thing. I need to push forward, like I’m pushing him onto his heels, and knock him out, hitting hard to the head.”
The co-main carries the real stakes
Tatiana Suarez, 35 and 12-1, fights Virna Jandiroba, 38 and 23-4, at strawweight. Jandiroba is ranked second in the division. Both have already fought for the belt and lost, Suarez to Zhang Weili and Jandiroba to Mackenzie Dern for the vacant title.
The UFC has not labeled this a title eliminator, so treat that as a reasonable reading rather than a promise. The winner is still the hardest fight left to make at 115 pounds, and at 35 and 38 neither woman has a second chance to wait for.
What a win actually does
Walker is 23-10 and 34 years old, and his light heavyweight ceiling has been measured over a long time. Beating a ranked heavyweight on ten days of notice would hand him an immediate ranking in a division where his frame is ordinary, which is more than another win at 205 pounds would have done for him.
Cortes-Acosta needs it more. Three straight losses at 35 pushes a ranked heavyweight out of the picture quickly, and he has spent the week telling anyone who asked that he intends to finish this one rather than win it on points.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
