UFC/WEC to Merge in 2011

[Buffalo Dave]

MMA Junkie:

The Ultimate Fighting Championship plans to merge with World Extreme Cagefighting in January 2011.

UFC president Dana White confirmed the news earlier today with MMAFighting.com, and a formal announcement is scheduled this afternoon.

The merger's primary intent is to fold the WEC's bantamweight, featherweight and lightweight divisions into the UFC.

"The timing was right," White said. "The reality is we purchased the WEC, (and) we started getting these lighter-weight guys exposure on television. ... Now, as the UFC continues to grow globally, and we're doing more and more fights, now we're bringing in those lighter weightclasses."

WEC 52 and WEC 53, scheduled for Nov. 11 and Dec. 16, respectively, will be the final events under the existing promotion. In January, the lighter-weighted promotion will cede its talent to the UFC.

White said the WEC's featherweight champion, Jose Aldo, will become the UFC featherweight champion when he first fights inside the octagon in January. Current WEC bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz defends his title against top contender Dominick Cruz at WEC 53.

The WEC's lightweight championship will also be on the line at WEC 53 as current champ Ben Henderson takes on Anthony Pettis. It's currently unclear what will become of the WEC's lightweight title, but UFC co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta hinted of a champion vs. champion superfight at the UFC Fan Expo London 2010.

"We'd love to see kind of a 'champion vs. champion' type bout with Ben and Frankie Edgar or something like that," Fertitta said. "Ben Henderson is a great fighter, and I think he could do really, really well against some of the top guys in the UFC at 155 (pounds)."

Zuffa, LLC, the UFC's parent company, purchased the WEC in 2006. The lighter-weighted promotion quickly found a new television partner, Versus channel, which aired all but a few of its events. WEC 48 also went to pay-per-view and was considered a rousing success.

According to White, four UFC events in 2011 will air on Versus, the current home of the WEC. Additionally, the UFC's longtime partnership with Spike TV will also remain in place.

I'm surprised this is happening now. It's a move that I think can work out well for UFC. It well help them put some names on cards they're lacking name recognition with, like next months UFC 122. Now I'm not sure if they'll do separate events for the Featherweight and Bantamweight fights, but that would also help them if they have some UFC known names on their cards as well. People are gonna say that it's gonna push names off cards, but I see it as making the people that struggle to find themselves on cards work all the harder to stay there.

I'm excited that their just gonna merge the Lightweights. They're a lot of match ups that will be intriguing with the WEC Lightweights coming into the fold. It would only make sense to have the Bendo/Pettis winner fight the Edgar/Maynard winner to unify the Lightweight titles. Definitely gonna see guys released like crazy in this division if they don't perform well, since WEC will be brining in around 20 Lightweights to UFC's 46.

Thoughts?

 

[Fizzy]

YES!!!!! I am so fucking excited about this. This is so good for the UFC and the sport of MMA as a whole. With all these new fighters we will never have cards like 119 or 122 that don't have that one big fight to really solidify the card. We will ALWAYS have huge fights. Not to mention WEC fighters will get paid more which is amazing. There are so many new possibility's that are opened with expanding the weight divisions with these super exciting weight classes. It's going to make every single card that much more exciting. Can you fucking imagine Jose Aldo on a UFC card defending the FW title? Insane. So happy by this decision.

 

[Reddannihilation]

No more free WEC cards, no WIMMINZ MMA . But Aldo = good. To be honest I'm kind of surprised this didn't happen the day after the purchased the WEC, they absorbed most of their divisions anyway. But it's good and bad, it's good now that the WEC LW and UFC LW's are merged, it's also good that the FW and BW guys will get more exposure on bigger cards. Basically it's good for the fighters, bad for the fans who liked the free events. Also I wonder if some dudes from LW will face the chopping block with the potential for division crowding.

Edit: Britney Palmer is cofirmed as a new Octagon Girl. Now they just need to fire Chandella, rehire Rachelle Leah and everything will be great.

 

[Minor League Brian]

I think this is good, but at the same time I'm not sure how this is going to work. The good thing is will be having a lot more "named" fights on cards instead of random up and comers. The prelims will also be probably some Up and Comers instead of random scrubs attempting a try out. All the cards will improve from it, but I wonder who is gonna get left in the dust. There's no way with so many divisions that ALL the fighters (at least, down to the Undercard Guys) hold on to their jobs. Their just isn't enough time on the cards for everyone to fight.

 

[Slyfox696]

The one thing I bet we get out of this, and this is in response to the idea there will be no more free cards, is that we get more Fight Nights on Spike TV. This way they can have more title fights on PPVs (because let's face it, cards with titles just draw better), but in order to keep people interested in up-and-comers, they can fight on Spike.

Personally, I'm not really a fan, because I'm just not a big fan of the really small guys. But I think it probably makes good business sense.

 

[INDYjon22]

Personally I like this move a lot. I can't wait to see guys like Ben Henderson, Urijah Faber, and Jose Aldo fighting in the UFC octagon. Some of the potential match ups are very interesting. Obviously a Lightweight unification title fight would be awesome, it would be even more awesome if Bendo retains and fights whoever comes out of Edgar/Maynard fight. Also, it will be interesting to see how Jose Aldo fairs against the UFC's best. He has shown dominance against WEC's best but with the rumored division move up for Aldo coming match ups against BJ Penn, Takanori Gomi and some of the upper echelon UFC LW's would be very fun to watch. It will also be interesting to see which WEC guys can make the cut and which guys won't. Guys like Faber and Mike Brown may not have what it takes to make it with the big boys and we will find out soon enough. I can't wait for the first event featuring both organizations.

 

[Buffalo Dave]

Guys like Faber and Mike Brown may not have what it takes to make it with the big boys and we will find out soon enough. I can't wait for the first event featuring both organizations.

They don't have to move up in weight. UFC is bringing in the Featherweight and Bantamweight divisions, just merging the Lightweights. Just changing the titles to UFC ones.

It was also confirmed that the winners of both Lightweight bouts, Henderson/Pettis and Edgar/Maynard will in fact fight each other to unify the titles.

Little side note, I can't wait for the UFC 2011 game now, getting to use the WEC guys will be great.

One more thing I forgot in my OP, is that with the merge of the Lightweight divisions, I'm sure we'll see some of the Lightweights make the move down to Featherweight with Lightweight being crowded, at least some of the smaller guys.

 

[jmt225]

Awesome move, but man... I really wish they would have waited a little while longer. Why? Well, it's obvious why they're really doing this, even though Dana would never admit it... they don't have a challenger for the Lightweight Championship once Edgar/Maynard goes down. They would have had no other choice but to give the winner of Gomi vs. Guida the next shot (Gomi will undoubtedly win this fight, btw), and I think the UFC wants both guys to get one more win after that before getting a shot. But fuck... I want Gomi to get his shot at soon as possible!!!!

Anyways, still a good move. Like Sly, sometimes I'm turned off by the little guys fighting, even when it's exciting. I don't know why I'm like that though, because it doesn't bother me when it comes to boxing AT ALL. Regardless though, I will love seeing guys like Faber and Aldo fighting in the UFC. And the fact is, these two have huge potential drawing power under the UFC banner. I mean, who are the two biggest draws in boxing? Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, of course, and they fight at 147 pounds. There's no doubt someone like Jose Aldo can become the Manny Pacquiao of MMA; he just needs exposure, something of which the UFC can give him much more than WEC ever could (even if WEC was owned by the UFC, it still didn't have the marketing nor name power as the UFC does).

 

[Tha Wolfpac]

Well this is a win-win situation for all the UFC fans around the world. We get a whole new weight division in the UFC, interesting matchups that we havent seen before and undoubtedly the UFC just got more competitive. People are going to be literally fighting for their spot in the UFC and will really showcase where each individual stands in the UFC. Like someone stated above me their will be releases left right and centre but the positives are just more stacked cards and bang for your buck as a fan you cannot complain.

 

[Ryman]

Now i hope that the UFC will do everything they can to get all the good bantamweight and featherweight fighters from Japan. I know they are trainingpartners but imagine Marlon Sando-Jose Aldo? With the merge they can offer money that they could not do while the WEC was on Verus.