With World Extreme Combat (WEC) 51 now in the books, the inevitable discussion has come to light yet again, will Zuffa make plans to merge the WEC and the UFC? Although the WEC is lucrative by itself, it's dealing with the same problems as not only the Ultimate fighting championship, but every one of the supplementary promotions in the united states. Market over saturation is definitely a real thing, and even though the sky isn't about to fall, it's tough to reason that too much of a good thing is a good thing at all. For each and every Ultimate fighting championship 116, we have a handful of UFC 119's. Searching ahead, we also see lots of the sports greatest names passing their primes, and there's more heading out than you'll find arriving as of late. I believe, without a doubt, that opening up the featherweight and bantamweight classes within the Ultimate fighting championship will aid the promotion to avoid lack luster cards that send bloggers and journalists sounding a larms, but more importantly, lead to more income.
Do not get me wrong, the title of the post is not "Why Zuffa NEEDS to Merge the UFC and WEC", I'm not under the impression that I've a small fraction of the knowledge needed to operate a multi-million dollar business, however neither of these promotions needs one other. Yet, I do feel that everyone concerned might be best served making this move, and us, the fans, will reap the huge benefits.
After the jump, my three big motivators in making this theoretical move a reality.
More Belts = More cash:
Two new weight classes means two more titles, and more important match ups to fill in cards. This means higher quality events throughout, and a lower likelihood of having main events like Frank Mir and Mirko Cro Cop. Tonight's main event of Jose Aldo vs. Manny Gamburyan would have been a fantastic headlining fight for UFC 119, with Mir and Cro Cop as the co-main event, and Bader/Nogueira on the under card. What went from a flimsy card, becomes a lot more worthy of the customer's dollar. That would not stop the fights that occurred from being boring, but my next point may have helped in cases like this.
Exciting Fights, More frequently:
Undeniably, the WEC is the home of some extremely exciting fights. Getting these fights in to the UFC will likely ease the pain of a card that's full of less than thrilling fights. Why don't we roll the time back, and say the Ultimate fighting championship put a fight for instance Leonard Garcia vs. Chan Sung Jung in the place of Nik Lentz vs. Andre Winner for the Spike TV prelims for UFC 118. Garcia vs. Jung is one of many, many fights that would have been better than watching Lentz do his best Jon Fitch impersonation against Winner. Everybody who was changing the channel, would have as an alternative been calling their family and friends to tell them to tune in. Once more, additional money for the Zuffa family.
The Best on the planet, in one Promotion:
The current situation with the UFC and WEC being separate is in no way a broken system, but it seems to me the best in the world, irrespective of weight class, need to be in the same promotion. The UFC is an complete promotional monster, and I'd wager that Zuffa could possibly get more bang for their buck if they put the Ultimate fighting championship name on fighters like Urijah Faber, Jose Aldo, and Miguel Torres. This opens up the WEC for something different. I don't know what Zuffa will decide, but I've thought for a long period the World Extreme Combat (WEC) could be well served if they took a good take a look at Bellator's tournament model, and started pushing out tournament winner's to the UFC. We have seen Bellator get a few of the top prospects in Mixed martial arts, while the UFC's greatest tool to create new faces is TUF, which has become less and less effective over time. I don't possess the solutions, but there are possibilities that have to be examined, and i n my opinion, the sooner, the better.
This move wouldn't be without it's downside. A few of the lower echelon fighters in most weight classes will probably be cut to create room for 2 new weight classes. If the World Extreme Combat (WEC) did actually stick around (although I'd expect it to simply become the Ultimate fighting championship, and also the UFC opening a new branch of shows to put on tv with this branch of the promotion) it wouldn't surprise me to determine those cut fighters just wind up having a pay cut and being moved around. It would be a necessary evil if the move was to occur, and it would likely be an enormous pain, however the payoff will most certainly make it worthwhile.
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