Balter Walker inexplicably won his fourth straight victory via heel hook submission, but that wasn’t the original game plan against Louis Sutherland at UFC 321.
That can happen if you break your leg just seconds into a fight.
There’s not much to complain about picking up a submission win in just 84 seconds, but Walker actually avoided disaster with a quick finish. It turned out that Sutherland’s kick had actually cracked his fibula, effectively forcing Walker to finish or risk not being able to continue.
“I felt it during the fight. When he kicked me, it felt like my leg was broken,” Walker told MMA Fighting. “When he kicked me, my leg broke and when I put it back on the ground, it felt like my leg wasn’t listening to me. I know something is wrong.”
“At that moment, I said I needed to go for the takedown and end the fight quickly, because if he kicked again, I would lose the fight.”
It’s worth noting that Walker kept a poker face throughout, admitting it was the only way he could keep his cool and keep Sutherland from discovering what was wrong with him.
There was no question he was hurt, in fact he was in pretty bad shape, but Walker wasted no time getting a takedown and then a heel hook that forced Sutherland to tap out.
“If you showed any signs of pain, this guy would kick you again,” Walker explained. “He kicked me. I felt pain. I felt like I blocked him, but I can’t believe it. I had a broken bone. I thought it was a muscle or something. I felt pain and my legs stopped listening. I tried to do something, but my legs stopped listening.”
“As you can see, I shoot for takedowns, and the takedowns were a little weird because I wasn’t listening to my legs. I felt like I couldn’t show him that I was in pain, because if I was in pain, If I show you, this guy will believe in himself even more. If I hit you, I’ll see that you’re in pain, so I’m going to believe in myself even more. So I tried to hide it, and it worked.”
Walker said that no one really bought it when he later revealed his leg injury considering the overwhelming way he won the match. That injury could have easily derailed his entire performance.
“No one believed me when I said I broke my leg,” Walker said. “My wife doesn’t believe it, and my coach doesn’t believe it. I came home and I’m walking. I don’t know how to walk, but I’m walking. I moved my apartment. I moved into a new apartment, near the gym, about a five-minute walk, so I moved some stuff. And my wife said, ‘What if I break my leg? Don’t you feel the pain?’ I said, ‘I’m in pain, but I just want to move into a new apartment.’
Even Walker wasn’t completely sure of the severity of his injury until he saw a doctor and had an X-ray of his foot. He was stunned when doctors returned with images showing his fibula broken in two.
“At first I thought I was in (a lot of) pain, but I told myself to ignore the pain because it would be normal after three days,” Walker said. “I went to sleep, and when I woke up, the pain in my leg was even worse. I still can’t believe it. I think it might be broken. (I went to the doctor and said) I really think my leg is broken.”
“When the doctor showed me the picture, I couldn’t believe it. What do you mean? My leg is broken? I didn’t want to believe that. I tried to tell myself to ignore the pain, it would heal.”
Following his recent win, Walker initially called for a fight against UFC Qatar on November 22nd, but even that is now impossible.
The good news is that Walker has avoided an injury that would keep him sidelined for several months, and expects to return in early 2026, likely with only a short layoff.
“I don’t need surgery,” Walker said. “They just put a cast on it because it’s not like the (whole bone) is (completely broken in half). In that case, you’d need surgery. But (it wasn’t) the doctors said it would take five or six weeks to recover. You can’t put any weight on this leg, because if you put weight on it, the bones might move, so you need surgery. He’s in a cast, but he doesn’t have to move (he uses crutches). That’s it.
“I would like to fight in December or November, but with this broken leg it will take five weeks. I will probably be ready to fight in February or March.”
If there’s one positive to take away from this whole ordeal, it’s that Walker is able to get the job done despite severe adversity.
Walker is already itching to play another game even though his broken leg is in a cast, which could put a lot of stress on his coach and wife to keep him from returning to the gym too soon.
“I’ve never had time to relax in my six-year career, so maybe it’s time for me to relax a little bit,” Walker said. “Every time I win, I come back to the gym a day or two later. I never go more than three days without training. This week was the first time in six years that I didn’t train for three days.
“I want to go to the gym, but my doctor, my coach and my wife said, ‘Don’t do anything for a week.’ Next week, I think I’ll do some (upper body) work and be ready to come back. But this week I want to relax and recover and recover properly.”