Prospect Fighting Championship made its return after nearly three years away with a thrilling Prospect FC 14 undercard.
The main event saw Kyle Prepolec (now 16-8) cap off the evening with a dazzling first-round head kick that sent Marco Elpidio to the canvas.
Competing just a two-hour drive from his Windsor, Ont. roots marked Prepolec's closest fight to home since 2019, and he couldn't hide his joy at securing victory the way he did.
"It's huge. It's a totally different area because usually I'm the one going into enemy territory, still with a lot of support and everything though," Prepolec told MMA Empire.
"It's definitely exciting and a good sense of pressure to fight harder and all those things. Everything adds up and it's an unbelievable feeling. It's awesome."
With prior experience on the sport's grandest stages, Prepolec is hungry to climb back to that level.
Whether that means returning to Prospect FC or seizing opportunities elsewhere, Prepolec remains focused on one thing: stepping back onto the global stage.
"Obviously, the goal is always to be in the biggest leagues possible because that's where the money's at and the top elites," he said.
"I want to be at the top where everyone else is and prove to be one of the best Canadians and one of the best in the world. That's my goal, one fight at a time. If it's not this fight that helps me get there then wherever the next fight is just get one step closer and take everything day by day."
Meanwhile, a fast-paced flyweight matchup on the card featured Gino Ghalehpardaz (now 3-1), who secured his third consecutive victory with a unanimous decision over the gritty Matt Dawson.
Ghalehpardaz noted the bout played out precisely how he envisioned it—including his hand being raised at the end.
"The fight went pretty much exactly how I though it would in the sense I expected a tough fight. I expected a tough, grimy fight with a lot of up and down," Ghalehpardaz shared with MMA Empire.
"I just expected both of us to just clash and go after each other in every position, and that's exactly what happened. One thing I previously said was he and I are cut from the same cloth in terms of we try and get after it, and I feel like we both did from every position. I expected to find a way to win, and I was able to do so."
Since falling short in his pro debut in 2019, Ghalehpardaz hadn't stepped between the ropes until March 2022—kickstarting what has become a three-fight winning streak.
Though the pandemic slowed his competitive schedule, Ghalehpardaz credited the downtime for prompting meaningful personal shifts that paid dividends in 2022.
"First and foremost, when COVID happened, there's very few moments in life, if ever, when we get a moment to do nothing. I was just finishing up school, so I really didn't have anything to do. At the time, I remember that story of Jorge Masvidal where he was talking about how he went to that island and he started reflecting on his life and was kind of isolated. Well, we were kind of isolated in our own way and I kind of started to do that too. I was thinking about my whole life, not just my career like what do I want to do or what do I want to achieve, why am I where I'm at now, why am I not where I want to be. A lot of that I also attributed to fighting. Something I felt just wasn't clicking for me, it wasn't working. During it (COVID) I just started training however I could, just trying to improve on little things. In fact, when most people came back from COVID they gained quite a bit of weight. I actually lost weight and I was in amazing shape. I just changed my mindset a lot," Ghalehpardaz explained.
"What also happened was I moved; my fiancee and I bought a home together. While I still train at Adrenaline, my home gym is now in Hamilton. Adrenaline is still my home but they're both one A's to me. I live in Binbrook, so I hooked up with Josh (Hill), Liam Gallagher, Isaiah Sharpe and everybody at Vision Quest. Those guys complemented with Niagara Top Team being so close, Aegis, BTC, Bora Jiu-Jitsu, I just started really mixing with those guys, learned some new stuff, expanded my own mind. I just felt like something clicked for me. I didn't want to be the same guy from two years prior in 2019. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it the right way."
Elsewhere on the roster, Nathan Williams, Edward Walls, James Foster, Jamie Ingram, Gordon Cunningham, Patrick MacInnis and Josh Martiniuk all collected wins.
