If anyone is going to be prepared to make his UFC debut on a week’s notice, it’s going to be a Marine Corps sergeant who did three combat tours of Afghanistan.
Kyle Stewart was starting to get frustrated as he waited for the UFC to call. He had scored a TKO win over Jason Jackson on Contender Series in 2017, but fell victim of a numbers game in a stacked welterweight division.
But just as the Tempe, Ariz. native was starting to wonder if his phone was ever going to ring, he find himself in the opening match of UFC on ESPN+ — and thus in the first fight of the ESPN era — on Saturday night in Brooklyn.