Havoc Fighting Championship 9 is all about opportunity.
For some Friday’s card at the Westerner Prairie Pavilion is an opportunity to earn a title shot, for others it’s an opportunity at redemption.
The main event is a top contender fight for a vacant HFC 135-pound belt between Calgary’s Noah “The Chosen Defender” Ali (5-2-0) and David “Bo” Harris (7-7-1) out of Mount Clemons, Mich.
Even Harris is jumping at an opportunity to just get in the ring as a last-minute injury replacement.
Ali is actually coming off a loss to Luis Huete at HFC 5 on May 2, 2014, after submitting to a rear-naked choke in the first round. The loss snapped a streak of five-straight victories, all of them in the first round.
Harris is looking to end a bad streak of four straight losses, including two in the Bellator Fighting Championship in 2012, but most recently suffered a second round TKO loss to Gavin Tucker (8-0-0) at Extreme Cage Combat 22 on Feb. 28, 2015, that fight just three weeks after losing to Bobby Moffett (7-1-0) at WXC 55 — Fully Loaded to an arm-triangle choke submission.
Machan is not expecting this fight to go the distance either.
“Noah and Bo Harris are both stand-up fighters, they’re both kick boxers, I’ve got a feeling it will end by TKO or knock out,” said Machan.
One of the more intriguing matches of the night comes in the return to the ring of two Red Deer fighters who are trying to shake devastating losses.
Jesse Fox (4-5-0), who is a part owner of HFC, was last in the octagon on Nov. 11, 2011. That night he suffered a first round TKO loss to Allan Munroe (5-5-0) at AX Combat 2 - Havoc, just 35 seconds into the fight.
He will be fighting Brent Harvie (2-1-0) at 145 pounds who was last in a fight on June 7, 2013 at HFC 2, a fight he lost at 4:16 of the second round on a TKO.
Machan has watched his business partner work hard to get back in the ring.
“I’m really excited, his last match was a pretty devastating loss, it took him out for a long time, getting knocked out like that is hard to come back from,” said Machan. “Jesse’s always been a wild stand-up fighter, he just goes in there and fights. He’s changed a lot of his training camp to be more technical, but when the fight come I think he’s going to fight like he used to.”
But Machan is not about to give favourite status to either fighter with both being out of action for so long.
“That’s why this fight is so good, both guys had a hard loss in their last fight and both are looking to make a comeback,” he said.
There are a lot of local fighters involved in this card including Wolfgang Janssen (4-1-0) who is looking to build of off his first round win over Jemark Brady (2-8-0) at HFC 8 on March 27, 2015.
He will be fighting Curtis Demarce (14-12-0) of Brandon, Man.
Having Alberta fighters on the card is important to HFC as a brand and as a vehicle to promote and develop these athletes here.
“We started doing this show because there was nothing in Central Alberta, it means a lot to us to be able to give the Central Alberta fighters a chance to fight at home,” said Machan. “We’re going to continue to work hard to make sure we have the majority of our card be local guys.”
The fights start at 7:30 p.m. with four amateur fights before the main professional fights card gets under way.
Tickets are still available for Havoc 9 at $50 on pre-sale through www.havocfc.com or $60 at the door.
“A lot of people wait until the Friday to buy them as general admission, last time we almost sold out right at the door,” said Machan. “If you’re waiting to get your tickets, it’s busy at the door, so if you get them off our website it goes a lot quicker.”