The fight card for Australian Fighting Championships (AFC) next event is taking shape with the announcement of two AFC title fight by the Melbourne based promotion.
Reigning AFC light-heavyweight champion Jamie Abdallah will meet “The African Assasin” Rameau Sokoudjou while AFC lightweight champion Issac Hardman will look to remain undefeated when he faces veteran Rob Hill.
AFC will be held on October 28 with the promotion’s partner, Chinese kickboxing organisation KLF Kunlun Fight backing up the following night with a kickboxing card. Both events will be held at the Melbourne Pavilion in Victoria, Australia.
After making inroads into mainland China earlier in the year, AFC confirmed the joint venture with KLF at a press-conference in Melbourne that featured representatives from China.
Abdallah has been out of action since March 2016 after an unsuccessful attempt at becoming a two-weight division champion within the AFC promotion, going down to recently signed UFC fighter Rob Wilkinson. Prior to that Abdallah had defeated Daniel Almeida to claim the light-heavyweight strap before defending it against Randall Rayment.
Very early in Sokoudjou’s career he was regarded as one of the scariest fighters in the world after easily disposing of Antonio Rogerio Nogueira and Ricardo Arona. That would end up being the highlight of Sokoudjou’s career as he went on to go 1-2 inside the UFC before spending the last decade travelling and fighting around the world. Sokoudjou comes into the back of losses to Lukasz Jurkowski and Sergei Kharitonov. Prior to that, in China he stopped Brazilian Marcelo Tenorio in what was his AFC debut.
Locally, Issac Hardman is having quite a year to remember. The Integrated MMA/Nitro boxing trained athlete has claimed both the AFC lightweight title belt and the XFC lightweight title to move his professional record to 8-0. Add to that a spectacular professional boxing debut and it’s easy to see why there is a lot of hype around this 22-year-old.
On the other side of the spectrum is veteran Rob Hill who although is only 32-year-old, has a decade’s worth of experience under his belt which included him battling the likes of Bernardo “Trekko” Magalhaes and One Championship fighter Adrian Pang, who also doubles up as a coach for Hardman.
Other match-ups recently announced for the event include Dane Beeby versus Brock McRobb and AFC favourite Peter Davenport taking on Chinese fighter Liu Zheng.
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