The story goes a tad differently depending on who you ask to tell it. One verbal account paints a picture – until the tale is interrupted halfway through when a detail is disputed.
“He kicked my face,” Valter Walker interjected, as his brother Johnny Walker halted his recollection of their first-ever professional training experience together.
Johnny, with a big grin, tried to push back a little, “It was just boxing.”
“No,” Valter said, also smiling. “… This guy kicked my face. … My first training with professional guys, he came in to do sparring. He kicked my face. I started to cry. Bro, I don’t know. I don’t want to cry. I started to cry and I ran to the cage. I ran to the toilet and started to cry. He went in the toilet and said, ‘Stop crying. Come back to the sparring.’ Bro. I had five rounds of sparring, crying. What the f*ck?”
It’s all in good fun, of course.
In the mid-2010s, Johnny and Valter lived in England. Johnny was on the brink of a Dana White’s Contender Series opportunity that would skyrocket his popularity. Conversely, Valter was going to law school and working in a restaurant. MMA was not the intention.
As Valter’s weight gained, Johnny convinced him to enter the training room in a full-on capacity. Valter had experience in amateur muay Thai and trained for exercise, but hadn’t actually trained to fight.
The fateful and emotional beating he took from his brother on Day 1 changed the course of his life, though it’s all laughs now. Fast forward a few years to the present, and Valter (11-0 MMA, 0-0 UFC) is days out from his debut at UFC Fight Night 240 against Lukasz Brzeski (8-4-1 MMA, 0-3 UFC).
“All these years, (Johnny) took care of me,” Valter said. “I live in Russia. We don’t live together, but we talk every day. He takes care of me. He helps me with my financials. I don’t make very big money. I make money just now. … He gives me advice in my training, my preparation, my everything. … In this moment, I’m more mature. It’s the moment I come out from the shadows.”
Though their bickering is constant and sometimes breaks out into playful grappling and pro-wrestling-esque choreographed striking exchanges, occasionally in public places with an increased level of intensity that worries bystanders, the brotherly love is palpable.
Valter is six years younger than Johnny. Half-brothers, they grew up in separate homes in Brazil. They shared the same father but not the same mother.
Despite the age gap and location gap, Valter always admired Johnny. On their off-days from school, Johnny would come over and the two would hang out.
“He was strong and fast,” Valter said. “He was six years older than me. It was like a kid to a teenager. My brother is a bigger teenager, and he was f*cking strong and fast. He can do a lot of stuff, like cool stuff. I saw this, and I was like, ‘Wow, I want to be like my brother. I want to be stronger. I want to know how to fight.’ He said, ‘You’re fat. You need training.’ I started training workouts, like gym training. After this, I was like, ‘I want to train all the time very hard to show my brother. Now, I’m more strong. I want to show results for him.’
“… My father and my mother didn’t want me to follow my brother. Sometimes, I’d come with my black eye, or I’d hurt something, and they don’t want me following my brother. Other times, they’d push me for studying, not for training. But all the time, my brother tried to motivate me, saying, ‘We need you training. This sport is for you because you’re very big.'”
Then the fateful beatdown in England transpired, but things only got better from there for Valter, who joined his brother in travels along the world. They lived in England together, then Thailand. They trained, ate, and hung out together. It was exactly what Valter dreamt of, as he grew up.
During their stint in Thailand, Valter met coach Gor Azizyan, another instrumental influence in the trajectory of his career. Valter later joined Azizyan’s GOR MMA in Moscow, where he now trains alongside fellow UFC fighters Shara Magomedov and Bogdan Guskov.
The two Walkers officially separated their training, as Valter went to Russia and Johnny went back to Brazil, then Ireland. Johnny burst into the international spotlight in late 2018 and captivated the MMA world with a series of nasty knockouts to start his UFC tenure.
Meanwhile, Valter turned professional in 2020 – under an alias. Rather than Valter Walker, he went by Valter “Ignacio.” The Walker surname was known globally due to his brother’s fame, and Valter didn’t want the extra attention and expectations.
“I was (feeling) all the time big pressure because everyone know Johnny’s my big brother,” Valter said. “There was big pressure. Then, I preferred to hide into the shadows. But now it’s time for me to come out from the shadows. … Now it’s my time to make the name bigger. It’s time for my brother to come into my shadow. Now is my time to take aim.”
Should Valter handle business as he plans Saturday at the UFC Apex, the brothers like the idea of his next scrap being on the same card as Johnny (21-8, 7-5 UFC), who is scheduled to fight June 22 vs. Volkan Oezdemir (19-7 MMA, 7-6 UFC) in Saudi Arabia.
“I think it’d be cool, no?” Johnny said, with a glance toward Valter. “Maybe we’ll fight in Brazil once, our home country, or America. Any place in the world.”
Valter concurred, “If I don’t hurt nothing on this fight Saturday, I want to fight in Saudi Arabia with my brother. It would be very interesting for me to fight on the same card as my brother in Saudi Arabia. … I can make the first fight on the preliminaries. I train every day, bro. My camp is every day. This is my work. I’m ready. After this fight, if I can open the preliminaries in Saudi Arabia, I’ll be happy.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC Fight Night 240.
