Frankie Edgar remains retired after his return to combat sports was halted two weekends ago.
The former UFC lightweight champion was scheduled to make his bare-knuckle boxing debut against Jimmie Rivera at BKFC 82 in his home state of New Jersey on Oct. 4, however, the fight dissolved just days before fight night after Edgar was pulled from the bout for undisclosed reasons.
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Edgar, 43, gave his side of the story for the first time Tuesday. Speaking on his “Champ and the Tramp” podcast, Edgar vehemently pushed back on speculation he wasn’t medically cleared to compete. The UFC Hall of Famer said issues first arose a week out from the fight when he received an email from a BKFC representative who informed him “the owner of BKFC is leaving for Manchester and he doesn’t have a phone on him,” and thus couldn’t speak, but that a doctor recommended to the promotion that Edgar not fight “based on my age, consecutive TKO losses, my layoff and my record.”
Edgar said the situation sounded “fugazi” because of the timing of the message — the fight was signed months prior and Edgar’s MMA record is public knowledge — and the conflicting results Edgar said he’d received from his own prefight medicals.
“I got a physical, I got a blood test, I got an eye exam. Then I had to go to three different heart things. I went to a stress test, an echo test, and a carotid test. Three different appointments. Then I also went to a neurologist. I got an MRI and an MRA. Every single doctor said my stuff was great. Eye doctor as well.
“The promotion was trying to say they weren’t getting my medicals, which is bulls***, they got all medicals. Now, they did not send my medicals to the commission at all. At all. I’m talking to someone from the commission, he’s like, ‘We don’t have your medicals. What do you mean you can’t fight, we don’t have your medicals.’
“So I gathered all my medicals and I gave it to them, and actually I got a call from someone there, they said, ‘I had the doctor from the commission look at your medicals and you look f***ing fantastic.’ That’s what he said to me. This is recently, this is after the fact I wasn’t fighting. He’s like, ‘Your MRI hasn’t changed since 2021. You have no white brain matter.’ That’s what they look for, I guess that signifies damage and whatnot. He said, ‘You have none of that.’ He even said, ‘I don’t know if you’re planning on doing anything, but you can tell your wife and family you’ve got a clean bill of health if you chose to fight more.’”
Uncrowned’s Ariel Helwani reported Tuesday on “The Ariel Helwani Show” that “a ticket-selling issue” with the BKFC 82 event was the primary cause of Edgar’s removal, rather than medical issues — that once the company failed to sell a specific percentage of tickets for the Newark show, Edgar was given a percentage of his purse and removed from the card due to the show’s profits falling below expectations.
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Edgar expanded on the sentiment and issue a warning to future fighters competing with BKFC.
“They didn’t sell enough tickets and they figure let’s get one of the highest-paid guys on the card and get him off the card, we don’t have to pay him,” Edgar said. “Or they lost a sponsor. These are all speculations.
“I thought I thought BKFC had something. I was like, ‘Wow, this is pretty entertaining. They got something.’ But not if they treat fighters like this. Because I’ll tell you what: Fighters out there, beware.”
The Rivera fight would have been Edgar’s first since his final UFC appearance in November 2022, which closed out his 15-year run with the promotion on a three-fight losing streak. Edgar said he was content with retirement and that BKFC approached him with multiple offers until the whole scenario aligned as a “perfect storm” to get him to come back. Fighting at home again, a new experience in a different combat sport — it all sounded nice, so he agreed. Yet by the end of it, Edgar indicated that his experience with BKFC just made him feel as if he got the runaround at the expense of the fans in his home state.
Frankie Edgar was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame in 2024.
(Chris Unger via Getty Images)
“I don’t know what BKFC is going to do, but this ain’t a good look. I want to be more mad and more pissed off about it, but I just can’t let it consume me that much, but you guys dogged me in my home f***ing state. That’s crazy. That’s f***ed up if you think about it. They came to me. I did everything they wanted, too, by the way.
“I went to every f***ing promotion. I hosted a f***ing watch party. I went to the Devils game. I did f***ing podcast after podcast promoting the fight. So I’ve been doing everything for them, so that’s f***ed.
“I was not thinking about fighting. They came to me, I ignored them once. Then they come to me again. Then [my manager and BKFC] come up with a deal. He gave me a number. It was a f***ing pretty high number. I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘No.’ They came back and gave me the number that I would do it for, which was a very significant amount of money. That’s the only f***ing reason I got off the couch.
“Granted, once you woke up the beast, that’s all I wanted to do was fight. It wasn’t about the money. I wanted to fight, but I’m not going to do it for nothing, either.”
Edgar has long been beloved as one of the most entertaining and durable UFC fighters of the past 20 years. His perpetual underdog status created a unique story in nearly every big fight, culminating with his massive upset title win over BJ Penn in 2010. He was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame last year.
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Unfortunately, “The Answer,” now expects to be met with the lingering cloud of a misconception that he wasn’t medically cleared to compete and that a concerning issue prevented his return.
“No matter what scenario went down, people are going to say, even still after this explanation, people are going to say, ‘Yo, you weren’t fit to fight,’” Edgar said. “That’s what they’re going to say. ‘You were medically not fit to fight.’ That’s going to be the narrative.
“Honestly, I don’t really don’t give a f*** because the people that I know, that know me, know I was ready to go. I passed every f***ing medical and, honestly, thinking about it now, I haven’t got any of these medicals since my fight. I just got a clean bill of health. I’m good to go.”
