Cortes Acosta vs Walker Results: Walker KO Caps a 5-Upset Night

That was a good card wearing a bad card's clothes. Eight days before the event the main event was a welterweight fight between Gabriel Bonfim and Sean Brady, and with fifteen days to go five of the fourteen bouts that eventually happened weren't on the card at all. What we got instead at the Meta Apex on Saturday was a heavyweight comeback knockout in the main event, five underdog winners, three first-round finishes, and a featherweight decision I'm still arguing with.

Here are the full UFC Fight Night: Cortes Acosta vs Walker results, and then the opinions.

Johnny Walker, on eight days' notice

Photo: Sexto Round / CC BY 3.0

The Waldo Cortes Acosta vs Johnny Walker pairing first showed up on the card on October 30, and Bonfim vs Brady came off it the next day. Walker had fought five weeks earlier, knocking out Mick Parkin in 3:35 at UFC 332 in his first UFC fight at heavyweight. Cortes Acosta came in ranked No. 6 in the division. Walker was unranked. The market closed Cortes Acosta at -225 and Walker at +185, and our model gave Walker 31.7 percent. I went with the model in the all-14-bouts predictions. Wrong.

For two rounds it looked like the model was right. Cortes Acosta dropped Walker in the first round and then did the sensible heavyweight thing, which is lean on him: 83 seconds of control in round one, 114 in round two. Then Walker landed 15 significant strikes to 5 in the third, scored a knockdown of his own and finished it at 2:27 of round 3. Fight of the Night, for both of them.

The detail I like most: 23 of Walker's 51 significant strikes went to the legs. That was the whole thesis of how Walker beats Cortes Acosta earlier in the week, and for once a game plan written on a laptop survived contact with a cage.

Where it leaves them: Walker is 2-0 at heavyweight inside five weeks, after a 2024 in which he was knocked out twice at light heavyweight. Our projected rankings move him straight to No. 6 and drop Cortes Acosta to No. 7. That's our projection, not the official board, which updates later this week. Cortes Acosta has now lost three in a row (Alexander Volkov, Curtis Blaydes, Walker), and the last two came eight weeks apart. Somebody should let him rest before the next one.

Who won the night

Tatiana Suarez beat Virna Jandiroba by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 29-28) in a fight between the No. 2 and No. 3 strawweights. She had 9:12 of control time to Jandiroba's six seconds, which is the whole story. That's three straight wins since the title loss to Zhang Weili, and our projected board has her at No. 1, ahead of Zhang, behind champion Mackenzie Dern. If that isn't a title shot, I'd like to hear what is. Our model had her at 64.9 percent and the market at -201, so nobody was shocked.

Photo: MMAnytt / CC BY 3.0

Elijah Smith knocked out Davey Grant at 1:00 of the first round, and it took 11 significant strikes. Smith is 24, Grant turned 40 in December, and this is the fourth straight UFC win for Smith since his Contender Series contract. Performance of the Night. The model had Smith at 84.5 percent, close to the market's -331, so the only surprise was the clock.

Andre Petroski walked in on three straight losses, two of them by knockout, took the fight two weeks out after Wes Schultz came off it, and stopped Mantas Kondratavicius at 4:39 of round 2. Kondratavicius closed at -314 and our model gave Petroski 24.8 percent. Petroski out-landed him 56 to 23 and held 5:18 of control. I'd have bet on that being Petroski's last UFC fight. I would have lost that bet too.

Thomas Petersen knocked out Gabriel Lorenço with 13 seconds left in the fight, 4:47 of round 3, after both men had been down once. Lorenço was making his UFC debut against a replacement opponent (Petersen came in for Alvin Hines on October 30) and lost the Contender Series glow in the last quarter-minute. Performance of the Night for Petersen, who was a -165 favorite and our model's pick at 59.2 percent.

Nina Milošević stopped Priscila Cachoeira at 3:40 of round 2, 45 significant strikes to 11, and is 2-0 in the UFC with two stoppages. The model had her at 84.7 percent and she fought like it.

Mitch Raposo beat Marcos Degli on three 29-28 cards as a +197 underdog. The market made Degli a clear favorite. Our model had it 53.2 to 46.8 for Degli, close to a coin flip. Raposo has won three straight.

The decision I'm still arguing with

Ollie Schmid beat Keiichiro Nakamura, and Nakamura was the biggest favorite to lose on the card at -359. Our model was even more sure of Nakamura than the market, 81.9 percent, so give Schmid credit before anything else. Three judges, three 29-28 cards, all for Schmid.

Now the receipts. Nakamura out-landed Schmid 94 to 71 in significant strikes and scored the fight's only knockdown. All three judges gave Schmid rounds one and two and Nakamura round three. Round one was 21 to 18 in strikes for Nakamura. Round three was 53 to 26 with a knockdown, and nobody scored it 10-8. One 10-8 on one card would only have turned it into a draw, so I'm not calling this a robbery. Schmid's 25 body strikes and his one takedown count for something. But a round where one man doubles the other's output and drops him should be what a 10-8 is for, and judges almost never use it. That's a criteria problem, not a problem with these three judges.

Murtazali Magomedov won by the same three 29-28 cards over Jose Delano despite being out-landed 86 to 43, and there I have no complaint: he had the knockdown, four takedowns and 4:30 of control. This was also the one bout where our model and the market split (I wrote about it earlier in the week). The model had Magomedov at 63.8 percent; the line drifted to make Delano a -122 favorite by the close. Model wins that one.

Model vs market: the scorecard

Our model picked 10 of 14 winners. The closing favorite won 9 of 14. The difference was Magomedov. The model missed the same three big upsets the market missed (Walker, Schmid, Petroski), plus Raposo, where it was at least much closer to the result than the line was.

Two numbers in that table should embarrass the model a little. It called Lucas Fernando a coin flip (50.9 percent) and he out-landed Billy Elekana 64 to 20 on the way to three 29-28 cards. And it had Seokhyeon Ko at only 62.6 percent against a -681 line; Ko landed six of ten takedowns, held 9:01 of control and swept the cards 30-27. The market was right to be that sure.

The rest of the card

• Austin Bashi submitted Carlos Calderon at 1:07 of round 1. Calderon replaced Lucas Brennan two days out, and it showed.
• Jose Henrique knocked out Jonny Parsons at 4:16 of round 1, 33 significant strikes to 15, as a -204 favorite.
• Karine Silva, the No. 11 flyweight, beat No. 15 Gabriella Fernandes on three 29-28 cards. Fernandes had more control time (6:09 to 2:06); Silva landed more, 52 significant strikes to 44.
• Lucas Fernando over Elekana and Ko over Wellington Turman, covered above.

The bonuses went to the main event (Fight of the Night) and to Smith and Petersen (Performance of the Night). Petroski stopping a -314 prospect off a three-fight skid didn't get one, which tells you how stacked the finishes were or how short the bonus list is, depending on your mood.

Five of the fourteen fights were booked in the last fifteen days, and the late bookings won the night: Walker, Petroski and Petersen all took fights on short notice and all three won by knockout. Every card should be this badly planned.