This Saturday night Australian Fighting Championship will host their debut interstate event as the promotion travels to Albury, NSW, for the first time—after previously hosting events in Melbourne.
AFC 9 will be streamed live and if you’re planning to watch the event online you can now help support Fight News Australia by purchasing the stream at our Live Fights page. You can also view the live stream there.
Keeping with the promotion’s growing reputation for matching top level local talent, the ‘AFC 9: Barney on the Border’ lineup features a host of local standouts including Gustavo Falciroli, Corey Nelson and Steve Kennedy, along with the return of Olympic Judoka Daniel Kelly who makes his way back to the local circuit following his time on the ‘Ultimate Fighter: Nations’ series as he comes up against Ben Kelleher from the Performance gym in Darwin.
The show will take place under the Big Top regal 8 marquee at the North Albury Football Club, a venue that according to the promotion can house up to 3,500 spectators. AFC 9 will also be the first time the promotion has had the opportunity to stage fights in a cage due to Victoria’s ongoing cage ban.
The event will be headlined by a welterweight title fight between KMA Top Team’s Corey Nelson, and fighting out of the Renegade MMA gym in Melbourne, Callan Potter. Both fighters are undefeated in the promotion with Nelson claiming wins over Alex Volkanovski, Walber De Barros, and most recently Rick Alchin, who he put away with leg kicks at AFC 8. Outside of the promotion, Nelson is coming off an upset loss to Anton Zafir at Nitro 11. Potter is currently enjoying a 5 fight winning run in MMA and most recently knocked out David Butt at Valor 7. His sole appearance under the AFC banner was at AFC 7 against Troy Resnic who he stopped with punches in the opening round.
As we previewed back in March, the co-main event will see arguably the premier bantamweight in the country Gustavo Falciroli and Phuket based Kiwi Kai Kara-France in a heated rematch after fighting to a controversial no-contest result back at AFC 7. The vacant bantamweight title will also be up for grabs in this one.
Among other matchups on the card, a featherweight tilt between Melbourne based Brazilian veteran Rodolfo Marques and Alex Volkanovski is also slated for the event. Marques will go into his fourth straight AFC bout with a win over Dean Purdon at AFC 8, while this will be Volkanovski’s third AFC endeavor as he looks to build on a submission win over Greg Atzori at Roshambo 2 back in February.
Fight Card:
- Corey Nelson vs Callan Potter – Welterweight Title Fight
- Gustavo Falciroli vs Kai Kara-France – Bantamweight Title Fight
- Andre Meunier vs Hale Vaasa
- Rodolfo Marques vs Alex Volkanovski
- Peter Davenport vs Kael Coster
- Daniel Kelly vs Ben Kelleher
- Daniel Way vs Steve Kennedy
- Mikey Vaotuua vs Troy Resic
- Tommy Murray vs Aden Baron
- Anthony Cowley vs James Londrigan
* Image via AFC Facebook Page
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