Cherished former UFC lightweight champion Frankie Edgar is coming out of retirement to fight Jimmie Rivera in a bareknuckle fight in the BKFC promotion on October 4th.

There’s many reasons why this seems like a terrible idea, starting with the fact that by the time fight night rolls around, Edgar will be a couple of weeks shy of his 44th birthday.

Clearly the biggest reason however is that though Edgar was a terrific fighter in his day, the few years leading up to his retirement from the sport in 2022 became painful to watch as ‘The Answer’ suffered no less than five losses to strikes in his final eight fights, with four of those coming in the first round.

Worse still, his last three bouts were all clean KO defeats, and as such when he announced that he was hanging up his gloves fans breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Nearly three years later it seems that Edgar has been lured back into the firing line though and is set to face another former UFC fighter and New Jersey veteran in Rivera, who is nearly eight years his junior at 36-years-old.

Rivera’s own UFC run came to an end in 2021 after a slump in form saw him lose four of his last six fights, having gone 21-1 in his career prior to that.

Rivera hasn’t fought in MMA since, instead carving out a career competing for BKFC instead, going 2-2-1 so far.

If there’s one glimmer of hope for Edgar’s fans it’s that though Rivera is a very tough, durable fighter, he’s not known for his knockout power, with only four of his 23 MMA wins coming via strikes, and zero so far in BKFC.

However, given that ‘The Answer’s’ chin appeared to have deserted him at the end of his career, there’s still a chance this could be a tough watch for his fans.