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Retired UFC welterweight, Dan Hardy, went on camera after the UFC 244 pay-per-view (PPV) event and criticized light heavyweight up-and-comer, Johnny Walker, for trash talking Corey Anderson while both fighters were waiting in the backstage tunnel.
“For five minutes or 10 minutes all the time before the fight, Johnny Walker was going ‘Corey, I’m going to knock you out, I’m going to knock you out,’” Hardy said on his “Open Mat” segment on BT Sport. “So basically he was marinating in this annoyance for five or ten minutes before the fight.”
Turns out it was a case of mistaken identity.
“Johnny didn’t say anything to me in the tunnel,” Anderson revealed on social media. “It was a fan behind him on the other side of the curtain screaming that for 5-10. Thank you again for the battle, warrior.”
Walker came into the UFC 244 event, held last Sat. night (Nov. 2, 2019) inside Madison Square Garden in New York City, as a sizable favorite over “Overtime,” but got finished by strikes after an action-packed first round.
And did not take too kindly to Hardy’s misinformation.
“Hey Dan Hardy, get your facts checked before saying stuff that is not true,” Walker wrote on Instagram. “I did not taunt Corey Anderson at all in the backstage [tunnel] before the fight and would NEVER do such thing.”
“I know that moments like those, specially before the fight, are for focus and concentration. I really expected that a guy like you, who has been a fighter for many years, would ask me if this is true instead of just talking shit about me and painting a picture of me of a person that I am not.”
Hardy later apologized … kinda.
“When a respected team tell me something, why should I not believe them? I don’t care either way, I’m just analyzing a situation,” Hardy wrote on Twitter. “The fact that you do taunt people, as you did when Corey pinged you with that first punch, makes it all the more believable. If you didn’t, then I apologize for sharing false information.”
For more on Anderson’s win over Walker at UFC 244 click here.