UFC and WEC to finally merge in 2011

The most relevant news in MMA was announced late last week by UFC president, Dana White. Zuffa (parent company of the UFC) has decided to merge both of its MMA companies together to create a company to span all of the major recognised MMA weight divisions.

That is, while up until recently the UFC looked after the heavier weight classes and the WEC looked after the lighter classes, Zuffa decided to pool all of the divisions into one company as of January 1, 2011.

As brands go, it was always going to be the WEC joining the bigger, more popular UFC and most people picked this happening years ago.

A few good things to come out of this:

1. The possibility of the more fight-cards and with better fights. It’s been a struggle recently with champions getting injured. Brock out for a while with his stomach, Silva now has his rib problem and Shogun is out with his knee until next year.

Now with more titles in the pool to draw from, the UFC can pick more title fights, more often.

2. WEC fighters will get decent pay and recognition now. Not only through fight payments but through sponsors. More full-time fighters means higher quality training with better training camps.

So these guys aren’t going to be thinking, “How am I going to turn up to work on Monday with a black eye or a broken nose?”

3. The light-weight division just became stacked: Ben Henderson, Anthony Pettis, Ricardo Lamas, Donald Cerrone, Bart Palaszewski, Shane Roller, Kamal Shalorus, Maciej Jewtuszko, Jamie Varner, Danny Castillo, Dave Jansen, Tie Quan Zhang, Anthony Njokuani, Chris Horodecki, Will Kerr and Ed Ratcliff.

If BJ Penn can’t stay motivated with these fighters in the mix.

He should call it a day now.

4. Jose Aldo is now in the UFC. If you haven’t seen him fight yet, wait till UFC 125 when he will fight on the main-card. Good luck Josh Grispi.

Couple bad things to come out of this:

1. WEC used to be televised for free. Now the old WEC fights could end up on PPV with Spike and you could have to shell out money instead of streaming it live, because you never do that with the UFC, did you?

2. The days are numbered for Strikeforce and Bellator. Yep, this is another step for global MMA domination by the UFC and a step backwards for every other promotion.

The UFC has always been a bit of a bully when it comes to dealing with fighters and their personal challenges and the smaller organisations have been more ‘fighter friendly’. This will end.

You want a job in MMA? This is how much you will get paid.

You like it, take it. Don’t like it? Go jump the next plane bound for Japan and hope you get paid by Dream (and ask the Nick Diaz how that worked out for him while you’re there).

Basically for the casual MMA fan, it’s a win-win. More fight-cards, more title-fights (seven divisions as of January 2011) and a much higher quality of the match-ups during the main and under-cards.