UFC 309: Young wrestling star Bo Nickal set to make long-awaited MSG debut

UFC 309 marks the Madison Square Garden debut for the biggest blue chipper in the sport, Bo Nickal.Well, sort of.OK, not really.The 27-year-old wrestling wunderkind out of Penn State has never fought at the Garden.He’ll break the seal on that distinction Saturday night against Scotland’s Paul Craig.But Nickal is all too familiar with the World’s Most Famous Arena, where plenty of tears were shed upon falling short the only time he wasn’t the top collegiate wrestler in his weight class.

As a 19-year-old freshman in 2016, the top-ranked 174-pounder in Division I settled for runner-up status against Ohio State’s Myles Martin.“It’s funny, I was at the Rangers game [Tuesday] night, and it was like, a lot of emotion coming back because I was walking backstage and I saw, just like, some of the spots that I was, like, crying in and stuff like that,” Nickal recalled with The Post during this week’s UFC 309 media day.said.“And I was like, ‘Wow, that’s so crazy.

It was right there almost 10 years ago,’ and now we’re back.”Nickal (6-0, six finishes) generally doesn’t do losing.He fell just once more as a sophomore on his way to three NCAA individual titles and an overall 120-3 NCAA record.

Though his Olympic dreams came up short three years ago at the U.S.team trials, he’s unbeaten since making the transition to MMA.Elite wrestlers can go far in this sport, and Nickal is one of the most pedigreed to make the jump.

It’s at the center of why there’s so much excitement in the fight game for how far he can go.The UFC quickly caught wind and might have signed Nickal right after winning his pro debut in 33 seconds in June 2022, but it opted to have him compete twice on the prospect-mining Dana White’s Contender Series first.Chalk that up more to using Nickal’s already simmering name value to draw eyeballs to the UFC pipeline program.As prospects go, Nickal is a promotional unicorn.

He has competed exclusively on pay-per-view programming,...