Former UFC lightweight champion, Frankie Edgar, was supposed to fight fellow Octagon veteran, Jimmie Rivera, as part of the BKFC 82 fight card earlier this month in Newark. But just a couple of days before
the bout, Edgar was pulled from the lineup and replaced by bare knuckle boxing veteran, Timmy Mason.
So what happened?
“There’s a lot of talk right now and a lot of things flying around about CTE right now and actually coming after commissions and coming after promoters for it,” BKFC President, David Feldman, told MMA Fighting. “That definitely had something to do with our decision. Sometimes you have to save fighters from themselves, and I’m not saying that we saved Frankie from himself, but I’m saying for that night, our medical team wasn’t prepared for that and that’s why. Will we revisit it? We’ll certainly talk to him if he’s interested, we’ll definitely dive deep, and if we can make it happen we will.”
Jennifer Anderson, the voice behind The Art of the Fight and wife of UFC veteran and current PFL headliner Corey Anderson, claims Edgar cleared his pre-fight medicals and was pulled from BKFC 82 after Feldman and Co. realized there was not enough money to cover Edgar’s fight purse.
“Now that Frankie Edgar has spoken up about this debacle with BKFC, I wanted to put in my two cents,“ Anderson said on social media. ”Now, Frankie’s a friend of mine. I care about him. But I also care about fighters being exploited. And what’s really upsetting about this story, ever since I heard about it, is that it’s not an instance of a promoter protecting a fighter from being exploited. It’s an instance of a promoter exploiting a fighter. They’re not protecting Frankie from himself. Every excuse they have for pulling him from the card, being his age, how many losses he had, how many knockouts he had suffered … those are all valid reasons to not allow a fighter to fight. But those are all reasons they knew about when they signed the contract with Frankie. Those are also very similar bullet points that other fighters that have fought on their cards have met, as well. For example, Ben Rothwell. They let him fight, and he had a similar situation, age and whatnot. That’s not the story. The story is, maybe they wrote a check they couldn’t cash.“
Feldman insists Edgar received “a very respectable check” for his troubles.
“They offer Frankie a very large sum of money, and a week out from the fight, they pull out the rug from under him,” Anderson continued. “It’s disrespectful to a legend of our sport. It’s disrespectful to his intelligence and our intelligence, as well. He cleared his medicals. The reasons they pulled him they knew about ahead of time. So what is the real reason? You had to wait until a week from the fight to pull it out from under him and give him a fraction of his pay? I’m not buying it. It’s not the promoter protecting the fighter, it’s a promoter exploiting a fighter, biting off more than they can chew. I’ve always kind of admired Dave Feldman’s scrappiness, but after watching this situation go down — the lack of professionalism, communication, to someone like Frankie, it’s absolutely ridiculous. I think maybe Dave Feldman, BKFC, they’re gambling too big, taking too big of a risk. I don’t think they’re necessarily being malicious. But I think they bit off more than they can chew. Took too big of a risk and couldn’t pay Frankie — and that is the bottom line of this situation.”
BKFC is expected to launch a $25 million “World’s Baddest Man” tournament in March 2026.
