Friday night’s World Extreme Cage fighting card came and went with a bang. Drama, roads back to the title and heated grudge matches, punctuated beautifully by Jose Aldo’s flawless finish of dangerous Ultimate fighter season 5 finalist Manny Gamburyan.
There’s something perfect about the WEC and its fight offerings and it’s not just the combination of exciting lighter weight talent and Zuffa’s slick production value. It reminds me of the UFC several years ago. Fight cards happened maybe only 4 times a year and as a result the matches were made exponentially more exciting by virtue of both anticipation and the limited space allowing for only the top talent to be booked on the broadcast.
Today’s MMA landscape is awash with almost unlimited cards both big and small. Mir and Cro Cops woeful tussle last week is a stellar example of the UFC’s main problem: with so many shows on it’s hard to fill them all with relevant, quality matchups. Outside of Brock Lesnars pivotal heavyweight title fight at the end of the month there isn’t a whole lot of UFC to sing and dance about. Thank god the WEC is still there to gets us excited about this sport.
Colm Ivers
Tags: Cro Cop, Frank Mire, Jose Aldo, Manny Gamburyan, MMA, UFC, WEC, Zuffa