There were only five matches at the XFFC 16: Festival of Fists 2 on Dec. 15 at the ENTREC Centre at Evergreen Park. 

Of those, four bouts featured Champion Gym athletes.

The first fight was an amateur lightweight match-up with Champion’s Will Robbins versus a very tough Joe Westbrook by way of Grande Prairie’s Heiho Dojo. This bout went to a unanimous decision in Robbins favour after some spectacular trades on the stand-up and several takedowns throughout all three rounds.

The next amateur match featured lightweight pitted Jesse Bull versus local Riley Kilpatrick. Outside of some occasional strong offence, Kilpatrick was handily outstruck by the taller Bull in a mainly stand up bout.

Rounding out the amateur part of the event was Champion’s featherweight Isaiah Metituk looking for his third win against Brody Zariwny, finding it quickly 2:05 into the first round via guillotine choke.

Then, Champion’s Kyle Francotti made his impressive debut to open up the professional part of the event in the heavyweight division against Ronin Warrior’s Chris Harrison. Initially putting up resistance, Harrison was unable to match the storm of striking, ground and pound and resultant rear naked choke submission by the Bill Mahood product 3:09 minutes into the first round. 

The main event, featuring a long-awaited professional rematch between Champion’s Randy Mahon and Progressive Fighting Academy’s Tom O’Connor of Lethbridge, was explosive and short. Early in the first round, O’Connor quickly capitalized on a mistake in the stand-up and was able to get Mahon in a rear naked choke. In an incredible display of courage, Mahon refused to tap out and the referee had to stop the match 44 seconds in.