What is the Future of the WEC?

As I watched WEC 39 last night, I couldn’t help but think about what the future holds for the World Extreme Cagefighting promotion.

The WEC has consistently put on solid fight cards that have been exciting and fun to watch. As an added bonus to mixed martial arts fans, the WEC events are all broadcast free of charge on the Versus Network; however, I just don’t see much in store for the promotion in the coming year.

Reed Harris and Scott Adams began the promotion back in 2001, and for the next five years held a majority of their events locally in Lemoore, Ca. on a native Indian reservation.

Between 2001 and 2006, most of their events aired on HDNet.

Zuffa, LLC purchased the WEC in December of 2006 as part of their expansion process. Both Harris and Adams remained with the company and operate as general manager and matchmaker respectively.

As was expected, Zuffa made some immediate changes to WEC’s operations upon purchase. The five-sided cage was replaced with a smaller version of the UFC’s Octagon and both the heavyweight and super-heavyweight divisions were immediately disbanded.

Zuffa also moved the WEC’s base of operations to Las Vegas, Nev. and held most of their events at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. The biggest boost to WEC’s status came in the summer of 2007 when Zuffa landed a broadcast contract with Versus to air live WEC events in primetime.

From the outset, Zuffa officials always maintained that the WEC would be run as its own separate entity and there would not be any cross-promotion or mixing of fighters between the UFC and WEC. For the past two years, Zuffa has remained true to that promise.

Things have slowed recently for the WEC however, and Zuffa is once again reshaping the whole promotion.

In December of 2008, Zuffa disbanded the light heavyweight and middleweight divisions, and signed the current WEC champions to UFC contracts. Several other WEC fighters from each division were also contracted by the UFC.

Just this past month, Zuffa announced it would further contract the WEC and chose to disband the welterweight division as well. The WEC welterweight championship was expected to be on the line at last night’s event and was promoted as such up until last month’s announcement.

In conjunction with the announcement to disband the welterweight division, Zuffa also announced it would be adding the 125 lb. flyweight division to the WEC. No flyweight fighters have been announced as being under contract, and no flyweight match-ups have yet been discussed.

As of March 1, 2009 the only division both the UFC and WEC share in common is the lightweight division. In my opinion, this does not bode well for the longevity of the WEC.

As much as Zuffa gave lip service to the fact that the WEC and UFC would be run completely separately, there really could be no doubt that the UFC was still the “main show.” The UFC would cherry-pick top fighters from the WEC if Dana White and Joe Silva thought they could help the UFC’s roster. In essence, we saw this first-hand as Zuffa did away with five of the WEC’s six weight classes.

Those fighters that Zuffa deemed worthy were signed immediately to UFC contracts; those that weren’t judged as good fits in the UFC were suddenly out of a job.

Now that the lightweight division is the only common bond between the two promotions, I don’t see any reason why Zuffa would continue to keep the WEC in operation.

The UFC, realistically, will never add the featherweight, bantamweight, or flyweight divisions and thus has no need to see fighters in those weight classes develop. The UFC lightweight division is already so deep that they do not need additional help from the WEC’s roster.

Zuffa as a company can not possibly be making much, if any, profit off holding WEC events. The fighter salaries and bonuses paid to fighters clearly show that. In the UFC, Zuffa holds the “center of the MMA universe.” Why should they continue to bother cultivating a smaller promotion that does not help the bottom line?

Personally, I will be surprised if we see the WEC continue to hold events as a Zuffa, LLC company into 2010. Outside of Urijah Faber, Miguel Torres and Mike Brown, there simply are not any fighters in the WEC that justify keeping the promotion as a Zuffa-owned company.

While the lighter-weight-class fighters are typically more fun and exciting to watch, they don’t hold the appeal to the common fan that the heavyweight and light heavyweight divisions do.

This undoubtedly means bad things for WEC fans. Without Zuffa’s backing and money, the promotion would most likely return to their roots and operate once again as a local MMA show without much fanfare.

I hope that I am completely wrong and that Zuffa does have some sort of master plan for the future of the WEC.

Unfortunately, I think the WEC will go the way of another Zuffa purchase, PrideFC and slowly fade off the scene and become just a memory in long-time MMA fans' minds.