I think they have far more potential for employee satisfaction and revenue gain as the UFC. I can appreciate existing contract messes and not wanting to put all your eggs in one basket, but the upside seems far greater than the downside if they can straighten out those problems and the logistics. I also don’t think the roster problem is an issue either at all if they’d just put out more fight night type cards for the developing talent, thus giving everyone more free MMA and clearing up a problem with the added divisions while making the employees and fans happier…. as long as it’s done wisely (which is a big ‘if’ and depends on pre-existing deals and future plans in place) the upside is potentially huge and the downside is rather negligible in comparison, imo.

Dave: The IFL was always heavily papered. However, the 8,000 they pulled in for the last Meadowlands show was no fluke, it was a prime example of the dumb MyNetwork tv exposure to 750k-1million eyes a week. Sure they papered Vegas on a big scale but what can you do, the IFL as a concept was okay and cheesy but the 900k production budget was just to much to big to fast.

MikeJJ: A few arguments are guys like Faber and Torres feel they deserve pay on the level of UFC fighters since they all work for Zuffa.
Another are locker room bonuses, Henderson and Cerrone got 8k each as a fight of the night bonus, a fight that would have gotten 60k as a fight night bonus on a UFC ppv.

So the financial discrepancies are there.

The UFC has hard enough time producing 3-4 fights for most of their 200-250 fights per year, adding another 50 guys will only limit how many fights each of those guys get a year.

The WEC doesn’t receive royalty/broadcast fees from Versus as much as Spike gives the UFC, they make less on Advertising, and less at the gate. The biggest WEC gate was ~850,000. That was what the UFC almost made for a fight night in OKC recently drawing 8000 fans.

There’s alot of give and take and if it was easy and changing the name to the UFC, they would have done it when they absorbed the original weight classes when they realized that just being Zuffa owned wasn’t enough of a rub to make the company financially viable or successful on their own.

The UFC’s roster is deep enough already.
They have no prob showing 11-12 fights each month on ppv.

Adding some idk 30-50 lighter weighclass fighters to the UFC roster means that either each card gets watered down because the ppv’s per year won’t go up and the actual fights on a ppv night won’t either.

So it’s more fighters that want to shine and have a place to earn money on the same numbers of ppv events.

It also means less free mma on tv.

What’s the BIG argument for a merger, again?

My friends know WEC about as well as they know Strikeforce — the place where Cung Le/Ken Shamrock’s brother happened that one time — aka not that well.

The comparison between that and Strikeforce running the HP Pavilion is relatively apropos.

They’re honestly not that much better than the IFL, and people shit on the IFL constantly for only pulling 3-4000 people to MMA shows. Less than a year ago they couldn’t sell 700 tickets in Vegas.

I have been a few times and 250 seems like a more accuate number

WEC is in a transition period right now while the UFC itself is half-floundering for big draws for their stream of cards with all the injuries while both seem to be resisting a merger still. Even the fans and media all seem to be wanting it to happen, yet it seems to just be a dream still. I haven’t seen it broken down from anyone with your perspective though, Zach. You’ve shown that you’ve thought about it in a few brief posts, but never offered up an analysis in any depth. I’d like a more fleshed out article of what you can see on it if you’ve got the time and desire, for what it’s worth. I think there’s something that is being missed, whether it’s diluting the brands through the merger, the VS/Spike contracts making it untenable or just a reticence to making the leap. I can’t say what it is, but there has to be something keeping it from happening.