Nick Walker‘s coaching drama has followed him into the 2025 bodybuilding season. On Oct. 25, coach Kyle Wilkes discussed the ‘cold’ phone call that led to him and Walker parting ways.
Weeks after his withdrawal from the 2024 Mr. Olympia, Walker announced that Kyle Wilkes would take over as his new head coach. This decision was made after an on-and-off again relationship with his former mentor, Matt Jansen.
They appeared to be a good fit, and in their first outing together, Walker pushed Derek Lunsford in a tie-breaker at the Pittsburgh Pro en route to second place. They followed that performance with a dominant victory at the 2025 New York Pro, paving the way for Walker’s Olympia return.
However, despite overwhelming fan hype, Walker and Wilkes revealed that he had mistimed his peak, leaving him outside the first callout in sixth place. “The Mutant” laid out plans to return better than ever, but now he’ll take on the challenge without Wilkes in his corner.
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Kyle Wilkes Reveals Why He and Nick Walker Are No Longer Working Together
In the video, Wilkes pointed out that sometimes Walker lets emotions cloud his judgment when making important decisions.
“Nick does what Nick does. What I mean by that is I don’t control his decisions. Yes, I think some of them are clearly sometimes a little bit irrational, emotional, and the reality is when I was taking him on, I naively in one hand thought being that we were good friends back in the day, maybe this would be the end of the road, hey I’m going to get him to the Promised Land, it’ll work out.”
He explained that Walker has ‘burned’ him before, and should have seen this coming:
“The reality is, he burned me once three years ago. I overlooked it. I don’t even remember how we rekindled other than me maybe reaching out, wishing him luck, or something like that. This time around, I thought otherwise. It sucked,” he said.
Shortly after Olympia, he received a ‘cold’ phone call from Walker and shared that they had stopped working together. What irritated him most was the fact that Walker did not have an explanation for the decision.
“When I got the phone call, we were doing a podcast, and you heard firsthand the conversation and how cold it was. To say I was surprised, I was but then I wasn’t because I think back to three years ago, this is exactly how Nick operates, and that’s what burned me the most, more so because there was no explanation.”
According to Wilkes, Walker also shared that he didn’t like his look in Pittsburgh, which many have deemed as one of his all-time best packages.
“Then, there was a comment made on the call, regarding the fact that he did not like how he looked at Pittsburgh. To me, I don’t even have words for that. That’s more like, you know what, man?
Okay, you didn’t like how you looked at Pittsburgh. That was your best look in the modern era. You might never look better than that, to be completely honest. That was the closest you got to beating the best bodybuilder on the planet right now, Derek. If he didn’t like that, I don’t know how to help you. That is the look I want to go for because that’s what’s going to put you in the best position to win.”
Those watching the 2025 Mr. Olympia had their own opinions of Walker’s showing. For Branch Warren, he didn’t point to peaking issues affecting Walker’s performance. He argued that his structural limitations, like his long torso and shorter legs, contributed to his drop in placings.
Having cycled through two coaches in less than one year, Walker is once again in a unique position. Will he seek help from a guru like Chris Aceto or Chris Cormier, or navigate his prep without a head coach?
Watch the full video from the UNWRACKED PODCAST and Sir Kyle Wilkes YouTube channel below:
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