'A culmination of all the time we put in:' Inside the UFC’s long-contested fight to get into New York
That was the first time I'd ever been in a cage.” And the cage itself — that UFC’s world-famous Octagon — wouldn’t be allowed legally in the state of New York for another 11 years, some six years after Edgar emerged as an undersized champion with an oversized heart.
Key points
- At the stiflingly hot Jerome Boxing Club on Westchester Avenue, Edgar came in for a fight with a New York kid named Eric Uresk in what would go down as an unsanctioned, unofficial pro debut.
- New York was the last state to sanction a sport that returns Saturday as a multi-billion-dollar company with UFC 334, featuring the kind of event for which Madison Square Garden is renowned.
- It’s harder to believe it took so long for the UFC to get there in the first place.
The long journey When the UFC made it to New York in the fall of 2016, it felt like the last of the original taboos had finally been overcome.
Additional details
- “The first time I stepped foot in a cage was my first fight in UFC.
- When he finally fought in New York again, at UFC 205 in 2016, 10 years ago this month, he was 35 years old and well into his back nine.
- Edgar, who was 23 years old at the time with a solid wrestling background from his time at Clarion University of Pennsylvania, had to be back home to Toms River, New Jersey, to work on Monday morning.
- “I was training for three weeks, and I said, ‘All right, yeah, I'll fight,’” he says.
- There was the infamous story of UFC 12: Judgment Day being moved at the literal 11th hour from Buffalo to Dothan, Alabama, in 1997, after then-Gov.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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