Commentators for HFC I announced
Michael Schiavello and Sandor Earl are on the mic at Margaret Court Arena on Saturday 21 November.
HFC I has its commentators. Michael Schiavello (@schiavellovoice) and Sandor Earl (@sandor_earl) will call the night at Margaret Court Arena on Saturday 21 November 2026.
The pairing puts a fight caller with decades behind the microphone beside a former NRL winger who knows contact sport from the inside.
The Voice
Schiavello is the Melbourne-born commentator fight fans know as The Voice. He became a regular voice of K-1 kickboxing, spent eight years with AXS TV in the United States from 2009, and joined ONE Championship’s broadcast team in 2017. ONE reports that he won Best Sports Presenter/Commentator at the 2018 Asian Television Awards. On 21 November he calls a fight night in his home town.
From the wing
Earl played 56 NRL games on the wing for the Sydney Roosters, Penrith Panthers, Canberra Raiders and Melbourne Storm, and represented New Zealand Māori in 2010. In 2024 he appeared as Phoenix on Channel 10’s Gladiators.
What they will call
HFC I is the first night of a new sport: eight machines, seven bouts and one belt. Every machine is an EngineAI T800 built to the same spec, 85 kg and 1.73 m, and each one is piloted live by a trained human operator. No result is written in advance.
Bouts run three rounds, and a machine that loses once is out. The quarterfinals open the card: ADRIUS v TROY, ADESAN-X v BANG BANG, MIGHTY MECH v VULCAN and RAMPAGE v NEON. The semifinals and final are seeded on the night.
Doors open at 6:00 PM and the first bout starts at 7:30 PM AEDT. The last bout crowns the first champion in the history of the sport, and Schiavello and Earl will be calling it.
