In July 2005, Frankie Edgar stepped into a ring in the South Bronx for an unsanctioned MMA fight that few knew would foreshadow the sport’s eventual arrival in New York. Edgar was 23, a plumber from Toms River, New Jersey, who had wrestled at Clarion University. That night at the Jerome Boxing Club on Westchester Avenue, he faced Eric Uresk in a secretive match held despite MMA being illegal in the state. The fight lasted one round, roughly 15 to 20 minutes, and ended with Edgar winning by TKO after absorbing brutal knees to the face that left him with a broken orbital bone.
“I was training for three weeks, and I said, ‘All right, yeah, I'll fight,’” Edgar recalled. “I did not know my opponent, and all I knew was that we were doing one 20-minute round or one 15-minute round, something like that.” His gloves were soaked from training, and he never weighed in. Edgar was the main event because he had sold the most tickets, hawking 16 at $10 each to friends and family, including his father, who can be seen holding the ropes in footage now available online.
The atmosphere was oppressive; it was 90 degrees inside the cramped venue. Edgar’s wife and mother were in the crowd, “flipping out,” he said. After the fight, he went to a Portuguese restaurant in Newark and discovered the extent of his injuries when his face swelled with air after blowing his nose. That underground fight was his unofficial pro debut, and it took place in a ring, not the cage that would define his UFC career. “The first time I stepped foot in a cage was my first fight in UFC,” Edgar said.
MMA’s underground scene in New York was a shadowy network of secret shows, often brutal and unsanctioned. Fighters risked serious injury, as one competitor learned when he lost his front teeth from a sucker punch during the pre-fight glove touch. Fighters had to keep their guard up constantly.
Despite the growing global popularity of MMA and UFC’s rise to a multi-billion-dollar company, New York State banned the sport until late 2016. UFC 205 marked the first legal MMA event in New York, held at Madison Square Garden with a heavyweight title fight headlining. Edgar was on the card, aged 35 and well past his prime.
MMA’s ban in New York dated back to 1997 when UFC 12 was forced to move from Buffalo to Alabama just before the event. The then-governor, George Pataki, prohibited cage fighting at the last minute. This moment symbolized the resistance the UFC faced for nearly two decades in the state.
The ban lasted because Sheldon Silver, the powerful New York State Assembly Speaker, refused to allow legalization legislation to reach the floor. Silver’s opposition stemmed from political ties to Culinary Local 226, a Nevada union with a conflict against Station Casinos, owned by UFC founders Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta. This political battle kept MMA illegal despite UFC’s skyrocketing profile, major TV deals, and star fighters like Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor.
Beginning in 2007, the UFC ramped up efforts to legalize MMA in New York. Marc Ratner, UFC vice president of regulatory affairs, made roughly 29 trips to Albany, often in winter, lobbying lawmakers. He described the process as frustrating because the resistance had nothing to do with the sport itself.
When MMA finally broke through in New York, it marked the end of one of the sport’s longest-standing prohibitions. Edgar’s underground fight in the Bronx that summer afternoon remains a stark reminder of the sport’s difficult path to acceptance in the state.
According to Yahoo Sports.
