If you’re the modestly successful WEC, what do you do without Urijah Faber? The former 145-pound champion has headlined several of the company’s most-viewed telecasts on the Versus network and appears to be the most charismatic and marketable of their bunch.
The WEC didn’t want to find out: they’ve signed Faber to a fresh multi-fight deal that should keep him employed until the Mayan apocalypse of 2012. (Oh, it’s happening, folks.) Faber is likely to remain a key figure in the WEC’s plans for expansion, which may include the addition of a pay-per-view model next year.
With WEC 43 scheduled for this Saturday, the recurring talk is that the WEC is some sort of extraneous body part that the sport’s evolution should’ve shaved off: there’s a market for a different, small-guy brand, but it may need more than the muscle provided by Versus to make it. For a show that’s sometimes pulled over a million viewers, though, I wonder how the promotion would be perceived if it weren’t chaired by Zuffa. I suspect most would congratulate it as a plucky upstart, not a smaller and weaker little brother.