When UFC hall-of-famer Frankie Edgar was pulled from making his comeback from retirement by bareknuckle boxing promotion BKFC due to concerns for his health recently it was feared that it was due to troubling findings from his pre-fight medicals, but the fighter has now spoken out to insist that wasn’t the case.
“I was training for six, seven weeks, I got a week out from the fight and we get an e-mail, my manager gets an e-mail from someone from BKFC stating that the owner of BKFC is leaving for Manchester and he doesn’t have a phone on him,” Edgar told mmafighting.com. “He can’t call you, but he’ll call you eventually. But in the meantime, his doctor recommended I don’t fight based on my age, consecutive TKO losses, my layoff, and my record, which sounds fugazi. That was before he’d even seen my medicals, this doctor, or anything, which is kind of crazy, and the fact that he set me up a week before the fight.
“Obviously, we signed a deal months ago. So all those facts were known much before we signed that deal, not to mention that I passed every single one of my medicals. I did a whole shit-ton of medicals.”
In many respects it’s not surprising that a medical professional would have concerns about Edgar as fans also expressed their strong reservations about the idea of him fighting again after three years in retirement given that he is on the verge of turning 44-years-old, and more worryingly was KO’d in his final three fights in the UFC.
However, it does seem that Edgar has a right to be frustrated by the situation given that BKFC officials would have known all this before they signed him up to fight, yet they were the ones pushing hard for him to come out of retirement.
“I was not thinking about fighting,” Edgar said. “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*cking 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*cking 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.”
And Edgar insists that despite his worrying late career form, all the tests he underwent in the lead-up to his comeback gave him the green-light to compete.
“I got a physical, I got a blood test, I got an eye exam,” Edgar said. “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 bullshit, 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*cking 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.’”
That being said, Edgar did admit that he ignored BKFC’s request for him to have his medicals re-done in New York.
“I never even went to that appointment because it was bullshit,” Edgar said. “I think their doctor wanted to see me so they could tell me I wasn’t fit to fight.”
If it’s true that Edgar was given a clean bill of health by doctor’s then that is great to hear, and it will indeed be a big comfort to his family, who he had acknowledged previously weren’t keen on the idea of him competing again.
The reality is that few people were into the idea though, and that could be one of the reasons that BKFC eventually opted to pull the plug on the fight – though it should be noted that in the end they did pay Edgar his fight money anyway.
However, Edgar’s reputation took a hit due to the way things panned out, so it’s understandable that he wants to clear up the misinformation and vent his frustration.
“I don’t know what BKFC is going to do, but this ain’t a good look,” Edgar said. “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*cking-state. That’s crazy. That’s f*cked up if you think about it. They came to me. I did everything they wanted, too, by the way.
“I went to every f*cking promotion. I hosted a f*cking watch party. I went to the Devils game. I did f*cking podcast after podcast promoting the fight. So I’ve been doing everything for them, so that’s f*cked.”
