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LOOKING AT THE UFC/WEC MERGER

Earlier this week, UFC President Dana White said that he would have a major announcement to make and when it was all said and done, the man had a big announcement. That announcement was that the top MMA promotion in the world, the Ultimate Fighting Championships, will merge with another Zuffa owned promotion, World Extreme Cagefighting.

This merger is essentially a dream for the majority of MMA fans, who can now see the fighters they have watched primarily on Versus compete on the worlds largest MMA stage. For those who do not follow the WEC, the WEC has the following weight classes, WEC Lightweight Division, WEC Featherweight Division and WEC Bantamweight Division, which will now all be under the UFC banner.

That now means that the first UFC Bantamweight Champion will be Dominick Cruz and the first WEC Featherweight Champion will be Jose Aldo. However, the winner of the upcoming WEC 54 bout between WEC Lightweight Champion Ben Henderson and Anthony Pettis will meet the winner of the upcoming UFC 125 fight between UFC Lightweight Champion Frankie Edgar and Gray Maynard to unify the gold.

Outside of the fighters and fans themselves, there are two other big winners in the UFC/WEC merger, they are the Versus Network and Strikeforce. Strikeforce will get a very small victory because most MMA enthusiast saw them as the third ranked MMA promotion behind the UFC and WEC, now they will move up to the runner up position by default.

As for the Versus Network, which has already hosted a plethora of WEC events and two separate UFC events in the past, will now get to join the pay-per-view channels and Spike TV as a place that hosts live UFC events. Also, something that will help the Versus Network is that some of the familiar WEC fighters that competed on the network will still be able to compete on the network under the UFC banner.

A few years back, the WWE released well over ten superstars in a single day, that day was labeled “Black Wednesday” by various internet sites. One would assume that when the UFC/WEC merger starts in just a few months, that the so called “low level” fighters in both the UFC and WEC could meet a similar fate due to the overwhelming number of fighters the promotion will have.

The most concerned of all the fighters should be the UFC/WEC Lightweight Division fighters, because that division will have the most influx of talent. Although the UFC will be adopting the WEC Bantamweight Division and WEC Featherweight Division, those two divisions are going to be new to the UFC, while the lightweight divisions are something both promotions have in common.

The UFC will also get a deeper grip into MMA programming on our TV sets as they will have exclusive MMA programming (live and/or taped) on pay-per-view channels, Spike TV and Versus. To make a comparison to the world of professional wrestling, the UFC now airs content on the same amount of channels as the WWE, which airs on the USA Network, SyFy and WGN.

As a fan of videogames, I am extremely excited as well because the next installment of UFC Undisputed should feature even more fighters than the last edition, UFC Undisputed 2010, which featured over a hundred UFC fighters. This possibility also benefit’s the UFC as a whole, because they now have competition in the MMA video game market, primarily from EA MMA.

Overall, the WEC being merged into the UFC will mean greater opportunities for all fighters and greater match ups for the fans to watch.

You can contact David Tees at bigteesps3@yahoo.com

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