Bye Bye WEC?

At the UFC 102 press conference on Thursday afternoon, UFC head honcho Dana White somewhat reluctantly made a few announcements. First, he stated that the UFC will be expanding its' live shows next year to "like three fights a month next year." Along with the expansion of shows, it looks likely that there will be an expansion of divisions within the promotion.

When asked by a reporter about the likelihood of seeing new divisions in the UFC (probably referring to the 195 or 225 pound ideas tossed around), Dana not only expressed an interest in adding lighter weight classes, but also came out and said that it will happen.

So what does this mean for World Extreme Cagefighting? The baby promotion of Zuffa has been doing exceptionally well with three weight classes (two of which are below the UFC's Lightweight division at 155 pounds). With the success of WEC, as well as the very valuable television deal with the Versus Network, it's highly unlikely that the promotion would end up being folded into the UFC completely.

The most likely scenario is that WEC will continue to operate as normal, but the UFC will pull some of the fighters up from the 135 and 145 pound weight classes to start them up inside the UFC. Fighters like Urijah Faber and Miguel Torres should be drawing in PPV numbers for Zuffa, and Dana White, as a businessman, knows this.

So will this be the end for WEC? Hardly. There is no doubt in my mind that World Extreme Cagefighting will continue to operate successfully, putting on tremendously exciting shows on Versus. There has been talk in recent months of adding a 125 pound division to the WEC, and this makes me believe that there has been no serious consideration of the promotion ceasing operations.

Jose Aldo (15-1) is next in line for a shot at the WEC Featherweight Championship, currently held by Mike Brown (22-4). The fight is tentatively scheduled to take place in November, but with Dana White's "sooner than later" stance on bringing the smaller weight classes into the UFC, one has to wonder whether or not this fight will take place. Aldo and Brown are among the top Featherweight fighters in the world, and an upstart division in the UFC would likely be looking at adding those names.

Many in the MMA community have disputed the claims from others that WEC is a "feeder" promotion to the UFC, but if things go down the way that I personally am expecting them to, then that's exactly what World Extreme Cagefighting will become. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is up to the fans, but one thing is for sure: there is no lack of talent under 155 pounds in Mixed Martial Arts, and sharing them with the UFC will not decrease the excitement level of the shows produced by WEC in the future.