The Weekly Wrap: Oct. 23 - Oct. 29

UFC, WEC Merge

For as long as the UFC’s parent company has owned World Extreme Cagefighting, and even more this past year, there has been rampant speculation about when it would be deemed prudent to merge the two rosters under the UFC banner. This week, nearly four years after Zuffa LLC purchased the decade-old Lemoore, Calif.-bred promotion, that trigger was pulled.

UFC President Dana White announced on a conference call that the WEC brand would dissolve after two more events this year: WEC 52 on Nov. 11 and WEC 53 on Dec. 16. He cited the UFC’s international expansion -- which will lead to more fights in more places -- as creating the need to move WEC fighters to the UFC ranks.

All WEC champions will become UFC champions and compete on UFC cards, which will now have featherweight and bantamweight bouts. The winner of the Ben Henderson-Anthony Pettis lightweight title fight on Dec. 16 will face the winner of the Jan. 1 Frankie Edgar-Gray Maynard fight to unify the titles. Jose Aldo will defend his title against Josh Grispi in the co-main event of UFC 125 on Jan. 1, according to a report by Versus.com. Grispi's scheduled Nov. 11 fight against Eric Koch is off.

Aldo was offered a fight with Kenny Florian to begin a lightweight campaign, but Aldo declined the fight, White told MMA Fanhouse. All WEC fighters and staff will be folded into the UFC, and no layoffs are expected.

As a result, the Versus network will be scaling down its MMA content, airing four UFC cards in 2011 compared to nine WEC/UFC events this year. White said the company’s television contract with Spike TV only allows four UFC events per year to air on another station. Versus has seen, in some cases, triple the ratings for UFC branded events compared to WEC shows.

Zuffa purchased the WEC, which was founded in 2001, in Dec. 2006. Its first show on Versus was WEC 28 in June 2007, featuring Urijah Faber vs. Chance Farrar. At the time, the Versus deal was attributed to the station’s interest in broadcasting MMA and negotiating with the rival International Fight League.

The highest-rated WEC event on Versus was WEC 34 in June 2008, featuring Faber v. Jens Pulver at 1.54 million average viewers. The lowest rated show was WEC 50 in August, featuring Dominick Cruz v. Joseph Benavidez, which drew 316,000 average viewers.