Jose Aldo and The WEC To Benefit From an Open Door Policy With The UFC?

In the world of Mixed Martial Arts, there are few things for a fan to love more than the "Open Door Policy".

The Open Door Policy, for those who may be unfamiliar with brands of Mixed Martial Arts outside of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, is a system of co-promotion between two organizations that doesn't necessarily have to involve slapping one promotion's name on an event card.

What the system usually does involve is one promotion allowing their fighters to fight for an formally allied partner company (see the Strikeforce/DREAM alliance) during an event.

This would be why Shinya Aoki was able to fight Gilbert Melendez in Nashville, and even though the alliance between Strikeforce and DREAM is fairly recent, this is why Nick Diaz fought Hayato Sakurai at DREAM 14 and also it's why Alistair Overeem has fought for DREAM and other FEG-affiliated promotions before finally defending his belt in a fight against Brett Rogers (which, as we all know, should have been against Fedor Emelianenko).

Actually, the other reason why Overeem's only title defense was against Roger is that Strikeforce literally had no challengers for Overeem to defend against at the time that he beat Paul Buentello for the gold, so Scott Coker allowed him to fight where he's fought.

Fast forwarding to the point, now—today, UFC President Dana White took part of a Q&A Session with members of the UFC Fight Club at the Earls Court Exhibition Centre in London, England as part of the pre-UFC 120 festivities.

MMA Junkie reports that, according to White, change could be in the air for one Jose Aldo and other members of Reed Harris' World Extreme Cagefighting roster, and who would dislike that?

I'd certainly hit the "like" button on that if it made Facebook, and I'd retweet it in a heartbeat on Twitter.

"From what I'm hearing, Aldo's interested in testing himself... There's some interesting fights with those guys (in the WEC), so we're working on putting those together... We're working on a lot of things right now that we'll be announcing in the next couple of months," said White at the Q&A.

What does this mean?

Clearly that means that Reed Harris can stay as quiet as he wants and shrug off as many rumors of a merger as he wants, but White has plans, and apparently so does pound-for-pound best Featherweight in Mixed Martial Arts.

With only Josh Grispi and Mark Hominick left in the WEC Featherweight division, it seems Aldo has retracted his downplaying of the possibility of a jump to 155 that he made after beating Gamburyan.

As White stated at the Q&A, the possibility of seeing the best of the WEC Lightweight division fight in the UFC isn't out of the question either, as the plans also include borrowing some of the WEC Lightweight division's best and featuring them in UFC bouts.

Yes, that does include the Big Four of the WEC's largest weight class -- Jaime Varner, "Cowboy" Donald Cerrone, Anthony "Showtime" Pettis, and WEC Lightweight Champion Ben "Smooth" Henderson.

I say this:

They've let Kenny Florian commentate for them, they've let Frank Mir commentate for them, and they've had Stephan Bonnar commentating for them, so it's like this:

If it means Reed Harris gets to return the favor to Dana White for loaning them some of his best just for commentary, then I'm all the way for it.

Dale De Souza is a Man on Fire—or as the regulars of MMA writing call it, a “Correspondent” for Bleacher Report MMA, as well as a contributor to Sprawl-N-Brawl MMA, RealSportsNet, Sports Haze and Hit The Ropes MMA.

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