{"id":80131,"date":"2025-08-19T14:40:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T14:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/80131\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T14:40:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T14:40:09","slug":"frankie-edgar-returning-from-retirement-for-bare-knuckle-fight-against-ufc-veteran-in-bkfc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/80131\/","title":{"rendered":"Frankie Edgar returning from retirement for bare-knuckle fight against UFC veteran in BKFC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">UFC Hall of Famer Frankie Edgar is ending his retirement but he\u2019s not returning to MMA.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Instead, the former UFC lightweight champion is taking on the challenge of a bare-knuckle fight as part of the first ever BKFC card in New Jersey on Oct. 4.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">At the event, Edgar is expected to clash with fellow UFC veteran Jimmie Rivera, who has been competing in BKFC for the past few years while amassing a 2-2-1 record overall in the promotion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Multiple people with knowledge of the promotion\u2019s plans confirmed the news to MMA Fighting following an initial report from <a href=\"https:\/\/sports.yahoo.com\/mma\/breaking-news\/article\/ufc-legend-frankie-edgar-signs-with-bkfc-oct-4-debut-targeted-against-fellow-ufc-vet-010331959.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Yahoo! Sports<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Edgar returns to action nearly three years after retiring from the sport following a loss to Chris Gutierrez in the UFC. The fight served as Edgar\u2019s third consecutive knockout loss in a row and he ultimately decided to call it a career.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Since that time, Edgar, 43, was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame while opening his own gym and hosting a podcast. Now he looks to rekindle some of the spark that made him a threat across multiple divisions while competing in the UFC.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Edgar returns to face Rivera as part of the BKFC event headed to the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J. with the card headlined by another pair of UFC veterans as Mike Perry clashes with Jeremy Stephens in a \u201cKing of Violence\u201d title fight.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Additional fights for the BKFC card in New Jersey are expected to be announced in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Mike Heck contributed to this report<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UFC Hall of Famer Frankie Edgar is ending his retirement but he\u2019s not returning to MMA. Instead, the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,32940,52367,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-80131","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-bkfc","11":"tag-bkfc-news","12":"tag-fighting","13":"tag-latest-news","14":"tag-mma","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-ufc","17":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80131","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=80131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}