Johnny Walker TKO’d Zhang Mingyang in the main event of UFC Fight Night 257 in Shanghai this past weekend, and now he’s calling out fans who have been questioning his durability in the Octagon.
“I have chin motherf*****s,” Walker yelled into the mic after being declared victorious, which he’s now explained was a direct response to all his critics who believed he’d lost the ability to take a punch after suffering back-to-back KO defeats last year.
“I said that because everybody’s like, ‘Oh, he has a glass chin,’” Walker told mmafighting.com. “These talkers that were never punched in the face. They don’t understand we have a life commitment with our careers. Our families depend on us. We train every day. It’s an investment for life here, and some fans talk a ton of crap [without] ever getting punched in the face. Instead of giving us support, because we deserve it. This is hard work, you know that.
“But these bums come talk crap at us when we get knocked out. We’re fighting the best in the world, brother. One punch from one of these guys can knock anyone out, you know? You saw that. I kicked him once and broke his leg. The bone must have touched the other bone and broke it. You saw he felt that, and I kicked again, and the fight was over with one kick. We hit really hard — not only me, but the guys I’m fighting.”
Even in victory though, the 33-year-old Walker admits that he had to fight through some real adversity during earlier in the fight to emerge with his hand raised.
“I thought to myself there, ’F*ck! If I take another one, it’s over,’” Walker recalls of the early action as Mingyang landed big shots. “Circle, circle. Three or four seconds later I was recovered, I realized I was alright again. I recover very quickly. But if he came like crazy he could also get caught because I was aware of everything. … I got hit with some clean shots and didn’t go for all or nothing, wasn’t cornered or any of that. I would circle to the right side to breathe and recover. The punch landed and I would feel [dizzy]. Like, it wasn’t a knockdown, but the punch landed. I was very patient and mature in my strategy.”
Walker’s leg kicks hobbled Mingyang mid-way through the second round though, paving the way for a ground-and-pound TKO stoppage, and now the Brazilian is hoping to get another fight under his belt before the year is over.
“I want to fight again this year,” Walker said. “Maybe at UFC Rio, I don’t know. We’ll see. It could be at UFC Rio, it could be later — November, December. But I want to fight one more time this year, God willing.”
