To be held at the Mount Isa RSL, the country’s finest stick fighters will be in the city for the annual event.

More than a dozen fighters will make the journey from places such as Darwin, Alice Springs, Adelaide, Melbourne and Wollongong for the tournament, which will decide Australia’s current champions.

Mount Isa Stick Fighting Club executive Gabe DeLorenzi said all was set for a big day tomorrow.

“We’re expecting about 30 fighters to compete, which is a really good number,” he said.

“Last year in Wollongong they had the same number, and that was before the economic downturn.”

Numbers will be bolstered by the big representation of Mount Isa’s fighters.

“We’ll have 13 club members compete at the championships and a lot of them have great chances of taking out gold,” DeLorenzi said.

In fact, five of them already hold the titles, including DeLorenzi’s highly talented daughter Tamara.

The tournament, titled the National WEKAF (World Eskrima Kali Arnis Federation) Stick Fighting Championships, will start at the RSL about 9am tomorrow, once the fighters have completed their paperwork and been debriefed.

DeLorenzi encouraged the general public to come along for a look.

“It’s really quite an amazing sport,” he said.

“The standard will be really high - some of the fighters here can hit you five or six times a second.

“There are a lot of things on this week but this is a very rare opportunity to see a tournament like this in Mount Isa.”

Entry to the titles is a gold coin donation, with proceeds going to Legacy.