Frankie Edgar nearly quit competing entirely after BKFC pulled him from card

Frankie Edgar came close to retiring from all forms of competition after Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship removed him from a card at short notice over medical concerns, leaving the UFC Hall of Famer angry and disheartened.

Edgar had entered a full training camp ahead of a scheduled bare-knuckle bout against Jimmie Rivera in his home state of New Jersey. Despite being nearly three years removed from his last UFC fight, BKFC had signed him with full knowledge of his medical history — including several late-career knockout losses — only to pull him from the event weeks later on those same grounds.

“Honestly, I almost closed the door on wrestling. Just competing in general,” Edgar told MMA Fighting. “I was hurt, I guess you could say. I was ready to go. I was pissed off. It left a bad taste in my mouth.”

Even after Clay Guida reached out to encourage Edgar to compete in a wrestling event through Real American Fighting (RAF), Edgar was hesitant. The BKFC experience had soured him on the idea of putting himself through a training camp only to be let down again.

With time, however, Edgar’s perspective shifted. A chance encounter at the U.S. Open wrestling tournament in Las Vegas proved to be the turning point. Edgar ran into RAF’s Izzy Martinez while watching his son compete, expressed his interest to manager Ali Abdelaziz, and within days had a fight booked.

“Ali is calling me saying ‘Merab in five weeks,’” Edgar recalled. “I said all right, let’s go. Months down the road, the fact that it’s just wrestling — I’m excited. I’m glad I’m doing this.”

Edgar now faces former UFC bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili at RAF 9 on Saturday at Rutgers University in New Jersey in a freestyle wrestling match. On paper, Edgar carries a significant pedigree advantage: he was a four-time NCAA qualifier at Clarion University, later coached wrestling at the high school level, and spent three years on staff at Rutgers.

Dvalishvili, by contrast, came up through judo rather than wrestling, though he has developed into one of the most effective takedown artists in UFC history — a fact Edgar acknowledges and says is precisely what makes the matchup compelling.

“I’m a wrestler through and through,” Edgar said. “I coached at the high school level, I coached at Rutgers for three years. Still heavily involved because my sons compete.”

Whether Edgar ever returns to BKFC appears extremely unlikely given what transpired, but the RAF opportunity has clearly reignited something in the 43-year-old — a chance to compete on his own terms, in his home state, in the sport where his athletic career began.