{"id":79367,"date":"2025-08-19T07:36:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T07:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/79367\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T07:36:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T07:36:10","slug":"frankie-edgar-ends-retirement-to-join-bkfc-will-debut-oct-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/79367\/","title":{"rendered":"Frankie Edgar ends retirement to join BKFC, will debut Oct. 4"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former UFC lightweight champion Frankie Edgar is coming out of retirement and plans to make his return in bare-knuckle fighting, his manager, Ali Abdelaziz, confirmed to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mma\/story\/_\/id\/46012143\/frankie-edgar-unretiring-43-join-bkfc-debut-expected-oct-4\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ESPN&#8217;s Brett Okamoto<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Edgar, a New Jersey native, has inked a contract with BKFC, and his debut in the promotion is scheduled for Oct. 4 against fellow UFC veteran Jimmie Rivera at Prudential Center in Newark. The bout is still pending approval from the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board, sources told <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/arielhelwani\/status\/1957611893771698454\" rel=\"nofollow\">Uncrowned&#8217;s Ariel Helwani<\/a>, who was first to report the news.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m super excited to get back in competing, especially here in Jersey,&#8221; Edgar said.<\/p>\n<p>Edgar&#8217;s return gives BKFC 82 yet another notable fight. The event will be headlined by a clash between reigning King of Violence champion Mike Perry and former UFC veteran Jeremy Stephens.<\/p>\n<p>UFC 320 is also scheduled to take place Oct. 4. However, BKFC&#8217;s event will end before 10 p.m. ET that night to avoid a potential schedule conflict with the UFC&#8217;s pay-per-view broadcast, BKFC officials told Helwani.<\/p>\n<p>Edgar lost his retirement fight in the UFC in November 2022. The 43-year-old, who claimed the UFC&#8217;s lightweight title in 2010 and retained it three times, was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former UFC lightweight champion Frankie Edgar is coming out of retirement and plans to make his return in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-79367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}