WEC needs a renovation

Jake Rossen over at Sherdog has a good piece on where the WEC fits into the MMA landscape. Like the UFC, it’s owned by Zuffa, and Rossen digs into whether it should continue as its own promotion or should be swallowed by the UFC and have the lighter weight classes added to the UFC stable. I’m including a couple of excerpts below, but if you’re a WEC fan – and you really should be – or want to figure out the WEC a bit better, check out the entire story here.

If the UFC devours it, the benefits for talent are obvious: 135- and 145-pound fighters can benefit from the UFC’s lucrative bonus system and pay scale. Their marketability from Spike appearances will boost sponsorship dollars. Some, like Faber and Torres, could conceivably see a pay-per-view percentage take, which would be nominal even if they draw flies. (The UFC brand is good for a minimum amount of business, regardless of the card.) And the lighter weights would clearly help boost Spike’s aging “Ultimate Fighter,” now planning an 11th season and incapable of milking Kimbo Slice indefinitely. With this season’s batch of sluggish heavyweights, the action of 16 determined featherweights would be an adrenaline shot.

The argument for the current structure: With some fighters making as little as $2,000 a bout, they’re probably poor enough to qualify for Medicaid.

If you enjoy fights, you can’t argue in favor of the evaporation of the WEC. There’s enough depth to the lighter weight classes to warrant their own subculture. What’s needed is a balance between their limited profit potential and the need for their freelancers to pay a mortgage. Pay-per-view events for major title bouts should be a reasonable $10 or $15, a number pushed hard to consumers. This ignores the psychology of viewers thinking something that costs more is therefore more valuable, and it probably wouldn’t work for a start-up — but people know what they’re getting with the event. And rather than get pissy they’re being asked to fork over dough, they’d probably appreciate the discount.

Fighters making $2,000 and another $2,000 to win aren’t going to move into another tax bracket anytime soon, but bonuses should increase substantially, a cost hopefully offset by the pay-television revenue. There’s no reason to keep champions off of the UFC’s product: Interviewing Faber, Torres or Brown for a countdown show and getting their faces circulating is risk-free; and with more 125-pound talent popping up, it would be wise to dissolve the 155-pound weight class and let those athletes drift toward the Octagon. The WEC lightweight title compared to BJ Penn’s is a waste of leather.