Nick Walker Edges Samson Dauda for His First Mr. Olympia Title
Nick Walker, a 32-year-old from New Jersey, won the Mr. Olympia title on Saturday night, taking the Sandow Trophy for the first time by the narrowest of margins and pushing Samson Dauda, the Nigerian-born former champion, into second place.
Walker finished with 18 points to Dauda’s 20 in a scoring system where the lowest total wins. He collected $600,000 for the victory, and Dauda received $200,000.
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The outcome capped the 62nd edition of the event, held from Sept. 24 to 27 in Las Vegas, where 322 athletes competed across 12 divisions. The Men’s Open final, the marquee event, took place at the Orleans Arena and began at 7 p.m. Pacific time.
The margin was decided by the format. Judging on Friday night and the finals on Saturday each count for half of a competitor’s score, and Walker built his advantage early. He took the prejudging round with 8 points, one ahead of Derek Lunsford, the defending champion, who had 9.
Dauda was third on Friday with 15. On Saturday, the order changed. Dauda posted a score of 5 in the finals, the lowest of any round in any division all weekend, while Walker scored 10 and Lunsford 15. Walker’s seven-point cushion from Friday survived Dauda’s five-point win on Saturday, leaving two points between them.
Dauda, 40 years old, was born in Kaduna, Nigeria, and moved to Britain as a teenager, where he first pursued rugby. He holds British and French citizenship and competes under the British flag, yet he is still known to many Nigerians as the “Nigerian Lion.”
In 2024, he became the first bodybuilder of Nigerian descent to win the Mr. Olympia, beating Hadi Choopan of Iran and Lunsford, and he took the People’s Champion award that year as well. His path to the top was steady: he placed sixth in his Olympia debut in 2022, third in 2023 after winning the Arnold Classic that year, and first in 2024, before falling to fourth in 2025.
His return to the podium this year followed a deliberate change in approach. Dauda said he had come in at roughly 280 to 282 pounds (127 to 128 kg) last year, a weight that did not suit his frame, and arrived in Las Vegas at about 310 pounds (141 kg). He had won the Europa Pro in Germany on Sept. 13, only two weeks before the Olympia, a tight turnaround that raised questions about whether he could reach peak conditioning.
Many onlookers thought he answered them. He said he always looks drier and sharper on Saturday than on Friday, and his finals score suggested the judges agreed. He also said he and Walker had both left the 2025 show disappointed and had spoken about making sure it did not happen again, adding that standing next to each other on the podium made him proud.
Nigerians see in the result a Nigerian-born athlete staying at the top of a sport that few from the country have reached, even in defeat. Finishing second at bodybuilding’s biggest show is another major entry in a résumé that already includes an Olympia crown.
Walker’s win was a story of its own. He placed sixth at the Olympia last year and third in 2022, and he entered this season with questions about whether he would return to the stage at all. He arrived leaner through the midsection than in previous years, finished second to Andrew Jacked at the Arnold Classic in March by five points, and won the Tampa Pro.
At 5 feet 7 inches (1.70 m), he is among the smaller men in the Open field, yet judges rewarded a combination of mass, symmetry and conditioning. He is only the second man, after Ronnie Coleman, to win the Sandow from outside the previous year’s top five. He also took home the People’s Champion award.
Walker said afterward that his plan had never changed: when he arrives at his best, he believes no one can out-condition, outwork or out-pose him. He praised Dauda for climbing from third to second overnight, calling him “a fighter.”
Lunsford, a two-time champion who won in 2023 and 2025, had come to Las Vegas seeking to become the first three-time Mr. Olympia since Phil Heath. He finished third with 24 points and made no excuses. He said he felt off even at Friday’s prejudging, that his muscles were not firing as they should, and that he told Walker he had earned the title.
The result extended a pattern. Last year, Choopan won the finals round but lost the title to Lunsford by two points. This year, Dauda did the same, and the Sandow again went to the man who led after Friday. The Men’s Open has now gone five straight years without a repeat champion. Choopan, the 2025 runner-up, withdrew from this year’s show in August.
Jacked, the 2026 Arnold Classic winner, finished fourth with 20 points in each round, for 40 in total. Tonio Burton took fifth, his best Olympia placing, followed by Michal Krizanek in sixth and Regan Grimes in seventh.
Brandon Curry, the 2019 champion, and Behrooz Tabani Abarghani were also among the 10 finalists, along with James Hollingshead, who placed tenth. Martin Fitzwater, who was fourth in 2024 and fifth last year, fell to 12th. William Bonac competed in what he has said will be his final Olympia.
Elsewhere on the weekend’s program, Andrea Shaw won a seventh consecutive Ms. Olympia title, moving into third place on the all-time list past Cory Everson.
Keone Pearson took a fourth straight 212 title, and Ryan Terry won a fourth consecutive Men’s Physique crown to tie Jeremy Buendia’s record. Five defending champions lost their titles over the weekend, and six athletes won an Olympia title for the first time, including Shealynn Burnett, the first Fit Model champion.
