The 21-year-old Oceania and South Pacific champion is hoping to add the XFC New Zealand featherweight amateur title to his collection.
He will fight Wellington’s Prashanth Guda in the co-main event.
They are sharing the spotlight with a professional women’s bantamweight title featuring two-times International Mixed Martial Arts Federation (IMMAF) world champion Gase Sanita and Ana Korzh, of Ukraine.
Murdoch was a promising junior boxer and represented New Zealand at the Junior Olympics in Argentina in 2018. He continued boxing for another year but lost motivation.
"I just kind of fell out of love with it, to be honest.
"And I always thought I would go to MMA when I was older," Murdoch said.
His first love was wrestling, so MMA suits him better.
He took a break from competing for about a year then got back into the gym, but this time to train for wrestling first and eventually MMA.
Murdoch’s transition into MMA has been tremendously successful. He is undefeated in six bouts and one of those wins came against his opponent for tomorrow night.
He beat Guda by Kimura — an arm lock that forces your opponent to submit — at the South Pacific championships in July.
The pair were also team-mates in the New Zealand Mixed Martial Arts Federation amateur team.
While Murdoch, who is an apprentice builder, got the better of the first fight, Guda is an experienced fighter with exciting stand-up skills and a lot of grappling experience.
Murdoch is equally balanced.
"I can do both. I think that is what makes me quite dangerous. If someone is better than me at one thing, I can just do the other thing," he said.
"I’m fairly even at both of them but I like to wrestle — that’s what I find fun at the moment.
"Wherever the fight goes, I think I’m going to be comfortable and I think I’m going to be better than him. But I would like to perform a bit better than I did last time against him ... and I’d like to get a TKO [technical knockout]. That would nice."
The contest is scheduled for five three-minute rounds, which suits Murdoch. He likes to wear his opponents down.
The other main event should be a good contest. Sanita represented New Zealand in Bahrain in 2017 and 2018 at the IMMAF world championships and was crowned world champion both years.
She was also named IMMAF female fighter of the year in 2018.
Korzh is a strong wrestler and recently defeated professional boxer Baby Nansen to secure her the shot at the title.
