WEC’s move to PPV will likely be a bumpy ride
Published by Zach Arnold on January 11th, 2010 in Current Events

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Everyone outside of Jamie Varner was all-smiles at WEC’s Sunday night event at Arco Arena in Sacramento. With a crowd of over 10,000 on a Sunday night, Sacramento delivered another excellent crowd for the return of Urijah Faber and the crowning of Ben Henderson as the WEC Lightweight champion. In the short-term, things look good for WEC. In the long-term, however, last night’s event displayed many future challenges the organization has in growing bigger from where they are now.

Reed Harris and matchmaker Sean Shelby, underling to UFC matchmaker Joe Silva, have made it clear that the organization will be on PPV in 2010. Strikeforce also intends to make its PPV debut later this year. In order to make a successful PPV, a lot of key ingredients are going to be needed to make it work. In addition to PPV, both promotions are going to be running many shows in new markets in hopes of creating and attracting new fans. Both promotions have major challenges, but WEC faces a much bigger uphill climb. Strikeforce is competing for market share with UFC, while UFC and those in the Zuffa family would love to see the public equate Strikeforce more with the smaller WEC.

The challenges for WEC’s long-term growth are going to be difficult, but not impossible to overcome. Last month, WEC’s telecast on Versus featuring Donald Cerrone vs. Ed Ratcliff drew roughly the same amount of viewers as Strikeforce’s telecast with Cung Le vs. Scott Smith on Showtime. For WEC on Versus to draw even with Strikeforce and Showtime, a pay channel, indicates that WEC has a lot of issues to address. There should be no reason whatsoever to draw the same amount of viewers as a pay channel. The ratings result indicated something alarming for both companies, which is that outside of the UFC brand right now there’s a limited amount of fans and those fans are going to be very picky about what they watch and why they watch it.

Which leads us to the many challenges that WEC faces in their expansion plans in 2010.

The first challenge deals with roster depth and the amount of quality fighters the promotion has. We’ve seen plenty of great MMA fights on free television over the last few years, but any promotion can book good-to-great fights using B or C-level fighters who have nothing to lose and will trade bombs left and right. It’s not exactly a nuanced position to state that there’s a difference between cultivating great fighters and booking fights that turn out entertaining. This principle was put on display perfectly with the UFC 108 event. The card was cursed and it wasn’t exactly a card that inspired fans to pay to watch it, but the fights themselves turned out to be fun to watch. UFC has a brand name and a track record, so they can get away with booking cards that are “entertaining” but don’t necessarily progress a lot of future storylines in matchmaking. With WEC, they are going to be an unknown commodity on PPV. There’s no PPV history there. The history of WEC in the Zuffa era is on Versus. So far there have been plenty of entertaining fighters on Versus telecasts, so why should people pay $30 or more to watch those same level of fights on PPV?

In a post-fight interview with Sherdog, Reed Harris was happy with the latest Sacramento event and tried to put a positive spin on the company’s future.

“Well, I was really happy with it. You know, at the end of the day it’s always about the fights. I mean, we can do everything we can as far as production and things like that but you know it’s up to the fighters to go out there and perform and I was very, very happy with the performances. I thought all the guys came in and you know nobody laid around, nobody just tried to you know eek out a win, everybody was going for it and that’s what we like to see.”

The second challenge with WEC is that the company puts on entertaining fights but you generally have to put up with some mediocre fights on the free telecasts to get the hot main event. As we’ve seen with UFC, there can be too much of a good thing and burn out becomes a real factor. WEC, at this point, does not have the volume of quality talent to be able to produce 4 PPVs a year. The company right now is dealing with challenges for putting on monthly cards on Versus, so you can only imagine the trouble that they will have with trying to produce stacked PPV cards. Unless, of course, UFC “loans” some fighters in their 155-pound Lightweight division and we can get some “super fights” featuring Urijah Faber vs. the UFC world.

Coming out of WEC’s event Sunday in Sacramento are the following programs: Ben Henderson as Lightweight champion (perhaps defending against Anthony Njokuani in the future), Donald Cerrone vs. Jamie Varner in a grudge match, and Urijah Faber vs. Jose Aldo for the Featherweight title. In March, there’s Brian Bowles vs. Dominic Cruz for the Bantamweight title. Looking on the outside-in are Mike Brown and Miguel Torres. Takeya Mizugaki lost in December and it was not good for matchmaking purposes. Chris Horodecki was going to be the young prodigy but he got his ass kicked by Njokuani in a humiliating fashion. Not since Kazuhiro Nakamura tried to remove his judo jacket during a fight with Wanderlei Silva have we seen a fighter lose a bout in such a dumb manner.

The problem with these programs is that outside of Faber, nobody on the roster is a fighter that you are willing to pay to watch on TV. Ben Henderson has provided some great highlights on Versus, but it’s doubtful that fans see him as a compelling main-eventer that they would be willing to watch on a similar level to Urijah Faber. Without Faber, WEC does not have a real crossover mainstream ace. Without Faber, they also don’t have hot markets in California to run in. Without Urijah Faber, they don’t have a hot Sacramento market — a market that is proving to be the one market so far that has made WEC look major league with big crowds. It’s only natural, then, that the company will have to center their first PPV around Faber vs. Aldo because it’s the only legitimate shot they have of making the business experiment work.

“I think Urijah’s certainly earned it,” exclaimed Harris on Sunday night. “I mean he lost to Mike Brown, obviously he broke both his hands and you know that was you know even though he took the loss I mean it was he sure put on a good performance and then tonight you know beating Assuncao, subbing Assuncao which we haven’t seen in WEC, I think Faber’s ready and I think the Aldo/Faber fight is what people want to see.

“I think that’s what we’re going to work towards, yeah, I think we’re going to try to headline that PPV show with Faber and Aldo, but again like I said at the press conference we want to have a deep card, we want to make sure that people really feel like they can’t miss and for that reason we’re going to build this card over the next couple months and when we announce it I think it’s going to be something that’s going to be very exciting to the public.”

It’s also going to be hard for WEC to sell #1 contender bouts like Donald Cerrone vs. Jamie Varner as PPV-worthy bouts, despite the fact that the two have natural heat with each other. It’s up in the air as to whether or not WEC pulls the trigger on booking that fight.

“Well you know without sounding evasive that is truly a call that Sean Shelby will make as our matchmaker. I would be OK with it. You know, when you’re, as a promoter, you know a lot of times there’s this angst created between fighters and things like that, with Cerrone and Varner there’s no creation there, I don’t have to do anything, all I have to do is step back and let them go at each other because they truly don’t like each other and so I would be more than willing to do that fight as long as Sean will give me permission to do it, so. Sean has to give me permission to do that fight, that’s right.”

With limited roster depth and a challenge of trying to make stars on the same level as Urijah Faber, WEC has enough challenges to deal with. However, the company’s bigger challenge is really their ownership. Their owners are Zuffa, the parent company of UFC. UFC at no point is going to allow WEC to overshadow them. WEC is an MMA property that has a contract with Versus and as long as WEC serves as a tool to keep Versus tied up with them for MMA programming, it means one less television outlet for Strikeforce or any would-be MMA competitor to strike a deal with. Reed Harris has plans for expanding WEC into Canada, Mexico, and possibly even Brazil. As a Trojan horse or a trial balloon, WEC does suit UFC’s needs just fine. However, WEC will never truly reach its potential unless they are removed from the Zuffa umbrella. It’s a catch 22 — WEC could really grow and become a giant player in MMA with Zuffa’s resources, but without Zuffa’s resources it would be hard for them to do the same thing as an independent promotion.

When you listen to Harris talk, he’s very excited and clearly he believes in what he is doing and what he is saying. He loves the fact that Sacramento is probably going to be WEC’s “home base” for Faber events in America. He feels like Canada and Mexico could be strong markets. As a salesman, Harris talks the talk as good as anyone.

“One of the things that I see is that California is I think a little ahead of the curve as far as MMA goes and then Sacramento is a little bit ahead of California even as far as MMA. We see really, really good crowds here. Obviously Urijah Faber’s very popular and I think the Sacramento area just of sports fans themselves, I mean they support the Kings. I was at the Kings game last night, they had a really, really good crowd so I think yeah we’ll make this a home and in this economy you know you are always looking for places you can you know hit in your tour of shows but the other thing we’re trying to do is we’re trying to go to Canada, you know we’re looking at doing a show in Mexico City, so we’re going to branch out but you want to always have those bases you can go back to.

“I know that there’s, I think about three places in Canada we’re looking at. I think Calgary, though, … is probably at the top of the list. Mexico City’s probably a little bit more difficult just because it’s you know obviously in Mexico and there’s issues with getting across the border, getting all the equipment, it’s more technical than really I think, as far as doing a fight there, we’d have a very successful fight. We have some of the greatest Hispanic fighters in the sport and I think if we rolled down there with Miguel Torres and some of those other guys, we’d do very well.

“With our new television deal you know we’re looking at doing some type of reality show at some point. I just see it growing, I mean, we only started doing the lighter weight fights in 2009 so it hasn’t been long and we’re already, we’re really truly known as the home of the best lightweight fighters in the world. I think we’re going to expand on that. You know, we talked about doing maybe another weight class (flyweight) at some point but I think we’re just going to focus on getting those lightweight guys out there and letting the public see them. Once they see them, I mean people that see the lighter weight fights really enjoy them and I had someone tell me the other day it’s like fast break MMA, you know, it’s like MMA fast-forwarded.”

It’s good that WEC has an identity. It’s good that WEC has at least one major-league ace with Urijah Faber. It’s good that the company wants to expand and grow the sport. The three major challenges they face are daunting. Two of them are not insurmountable. The third one may prove to be. Will Zuffa give WEC a fair amount of support or will WEC be forever stunted as a distant relative of UFC in business matters? With Zuffa’s resources, WEC has a shot on PPV. Without the full commitment and backing of Zuffa, it’s going to be impossible for WEC to make the push needed to grow as the #2 MMA company in the United States.