Johnny Walker is out of UFC Belgrade after the UFC could not find a replacement for Ante Delija, who was unable to compete because of an injury. The move strips the Belgrade Arena card of a planned heavyweight debut during fight week.
UFC Belgrade loses a bout
Walker was scheduled to make his heavyweight debut on the UFC Belgrade card, but the matchup collapsed once Delija’s spot could not be filled. Guilherme Cruz wrote, “UFC couldn't find a replacement for Ante Delija so Johnny Walker is no longer fighting this weekend at UFC Belgrade, I'm told.”
That leaves the event down one fight at the moment the promotion is staging its first card in the Balkans. For a lineup built around a new market, losing a heavyweight bout from the sheet is more than a late scratch; it changes how the card reads on paper and how much attention the rest of the bill has to carry.
Walker’s heavyweight reset stalls
Walker had won only one bout since 2024, and the move to heavyweight was supposed to open a fresh chapter after a recent slide. Instead, the shift stops before he can test the division, which is the kind of interruption that can push a fighter back into another waiting period instead of giving him a clean launch.
He entered this week with some recent momentum markers: he lost to Dominick Reyes at UFC 327 in April, then beat Zhang Mingyang last August and earned a Performance of the Night award. That mix made the heavyweight jump one of the more practical bets on the UFC Belgrade card, even if the booking never got to the cage.
Delija’s injury leaves a gap
Delija’s injury is the reason the bout broke apart, and the UFC’s inability to find a stand-in is the mechanism that removed Walker from the lineup. In fight-week terms, that usually means the promoter either finds another opponent fast or drops the fight entirely; here, it chose the second path.
Walker’s situation now turns on one question that the card does not answer: who, if anyone, will replace Delija and restore the heavyweight debut to UFC Belgrade. Until that changes, the card goes forward without the bout that was supposed to help define a historic first stop in Serbia.
