Lachie Dart and Alish Smith will feature on the Diamondback Fighting Championship card on Friday night.

They will call on their vast Muay Thai experience when they enter the ring.

Dart, 23, will compete in his first professional MMA bout, having had one fight as an amatuer in December.

Smith, 20, is excited to feature in the first female amauter fight on the competition’s card.

Dart faces three five-minute rounds and Smith three three-minute rounds.

The duo, who train almost everyday under David Gibb at Spartan Mixed Martial Arts in Warrnambool, hope their kickboxing skills will help their chances.

“I started Muay Thai through my Mum (Sharon),” Smith said.

“She wanted to start for fitness and didn’t want to go by herself and wanted me to go with her, so I did and I loved it.

“I started training that for a while and then I went to boxing.

“I missed kicking people so I went back to Muay Thai.

“I was in Thailand for four months last year training and when I got back I started MMA.”

Smith, who juggles training with work for her dad Paul’s gardening and tree-lopping business and weekend shifts at The Star in Port Fairy, said her move into mixed martial arts had been a steep learning curve.

“The ground stuff is so much harder; there’s so much to it,” she said.

“You’d think it would be really easy but when you do it it’s not at all.”

Dart, a plasterer who has 16 Muay Thai fights to his credit, said he was excited to test himself in a new genre on a big stage.

“It is something a little bit different – the ground game is more interesting,” Dart said.

“I am looking forward to the stylistic difference to kickboxing.

“The show that we’re fighting on is really good and really well run.”