UFC 309 marks the Madison Square Garden debut for the biggest blue chipper in the sport, Bo Nickal.

Well, sort of.

Okay, not really.

The 27-year-old wrestling prodigy from Penn State has never fought at the Garden. On Saturday evening he will break the seal against Scot Paul Craig.

But Nickal is all too familiar with the most famous arena in the world, where many tears were shed when he fell short the only time he wasn’t the best collegiate wrestler in his weight class.

As a 19-year-old freshman in 2016, the top-ranked 174-pounder in Division I settled for second place against Ohio State’s Myles Martin.

“It’s funny, I was at the Rangers game (Tuesday night) and there was a lot of emotion coming back because I was walking backstage and I saw some places where I was crying. and stuff like that,” Nickal recalled with The Post during this week’s UFC 309 media day. “And I thought, ‘Wow, that’s so crazy. It was there almost ten 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 en route to three individual NCAA titles and an overall NCAA record of 120-3.

Although his Olympic dreams were shattered three years ago at the US team events, he is undefeated since making the switch to MMA.

Elite wrestlers can go far in this sport, and Nickal is one of the most experienced wrestlers to make the leap. It’s at the heart of why there’s so much excitement in the fight game about how far he can go.

The UFC caught wind quickly and might have been able to sign Nickal right after winning his pro debut in 33 seconds in June 2022, but they opted to have him compete two times in the prospect-mining Dana White’s Contender Series first.

Explain that again by using Nickal’s already simmering name value to draw attention to the UFC pipeline program.

As prospects go, Nickal is a promotional unicorn.

He has competed exclusively in pay-per-view programming, making his debut last year at UFC 285 in the pay-per-view portion of Jon Jones’ heavyweight debut.

(Jones finally puts the championship he won that night on the line for the first time in Saturday’s main event against Stipe Miocic.)

Although he says he would fight at the intimate UFC Apex, he is smart enough to see what is going on with the management of his budding career.

“I think it just shows the type of draw I am, how many people want to watch me, and the support that I have from the wrestling community and that growing community of fans,” Nickal said of his placement on the tentpole. events. “I don’t think they put me on pay-per-view cards, UFC 300, MSG, these huge shows for no reason, right? It’s a bit to build me up, but it’s also because a lot of people want to look at me.”

Most in their third year of fighting are still on the regional stage, in many cases taking five or more fights a year to gain experience – and make some money, which is not plentiful on the regional stage.

Nickal’s unique blend of decades-honed wrestling skills and name value means he makes a more comfortable living than anyone with just a half-dozen pro fights on his ledger, but it comes at the expense of in-cage experience.

The UFC has kept him at a pace of two fights per year.

Nickal recognizes the double-edged sword he is working with.

“It hurts because I just don’t have the cage time that other people have. I’ve spent less than ten minutes in the cage total in my professional career, and most people get that in one fight,” Nickal explained. “As far as the experience is concerned, it is negative. But you look at the positive sides. I am healthy; Obviously I have a 100 percent finish rate and a lot of people want to see me fight. For me, the emphasis is once again mainly on developing, improving and getting better. The outcome of the fight is kind of secondary, right?

Craig (17-8-1, 17 finishes) represents the next big step in a career that could take a project by leaps and bounds.

A win over the submission top man, who previously ranked in the UFC but has lost four of his last five, could make him one of the top opponents next year. And some are already imagining a not-too-distant future where he fights for the UFC middleweight championship.

But Nickal is comfortable with the cadence of his rise. He is good at the process of adding skills and improving them while gaining cage time.

He expects UFC gold to come, but in due time.

“I think I have a lot of work to do in my opinion,” Nickal said. “I will always have a lot of work to do. Even if I am the champion, there is still a lot of development to be done, so… there are no limits in my opinion to the timeline of the way it should go. I’m just focused on developing, improving, getting better. If it happens within a year, fine. It happens in three years, great. I just know where I’m going. I know my journey, and that is really what matters to me.”