Walker Told Doctor He Was ‘In The Desert’

Johnny Walker’s poetic response to a specific question from the cageside physician is what led to his fight with Magomed Ankalaev being waved off.

Johnny Walker is an odd dude, and strange things keep happening to him in his UFC career.

This is a guy who wrecked his shoulder doing the worm dance following a win. A guy who was kicked out of the arena following his UFC 279 win and left to wander the streets in his fight shorts. Now he’s involved in another bizarre incident involving a controversial cageside physician at UFC 294.

Three minutes into Walker’s fight with Magomed Ankalaev, Ankalaev hit Walker with a knee to the face while Walker was completely grounded. An extremely illegal move! The referee stopped the action to give Johnny time to recover, and the doctor came in to assess him.

According to Walker’s coach John Kavanagh, the doctor asked Walker where he was. Walker, being the weirdo he is, answered “I’m in the desert.”

Technically correct? Maybe. But not specific enough for the physician, who told the referee Walker was unable to continue. The fight was waved off to Walker’s extremely vocal protest, and a brawl nearly broke out as both Walker and Ankalaev tried to restart the fight on their own.

To add insult to injury for Walker and his team, the illegal knee that ended the fight was somehow ruled ‘unintentional,’ resulting in a No Contest rather than a win for Johnny via disqualification.

“Unintentional foul? Wtf he intend to do?” Kavanagh vented on X (formerly Twitter). “Just be honest and say you don’t have the balls to enforce the rules? If there’s no rules, just let us know. We can prepare for that. No.1 bulls—.”

We agree with you there, coach.

Following the event, UFC CEO Dana White gave the ringside physician a pass for mucking up the light heavyweight contender bout.

“The guy’s inexperienced,” White said at the UFC 294 post-fight press conference. “I think there’s a lot of things that probably happened. I guess he asked him ‘Where are you right now?’ and the response was ‘I’m in the desert.’ He’s not wrong. I think there’s a big language barrier in there between the two of them. Inexperience. It sucks.”

“It’s one of those things that happen sometimes, but we’ll make it right and we’ll fix it.”

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For complete UFC 294 results, coverage and highlights click HERE.