If you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple days, or just haven’t heard yet, the UFC and the WEC have merged together and at the start of the New Year the WEC will be under the UFC banner together. This means that now on the UFC roster are Bantamweights and Featherweights, in addition to a new group of Lightweights.
Since the UFC doesn’t have a Bantamweight or Featherweight division the current WEC champs will become the first ever UFC champ in that weight class. The Lightweight division though will now have two Champions and this could be a big problem. Not to worry though, the Big Brains behind the whole deal have already thought of that and have come up with a solution: a Lightweight Tournament to determine the one, true champion.
On December 16, WEC champ Ben Henderson defends his belt against rising star Anthony Pettis at WEC 53. His UFC counterpart, Frankie Edgar defends his Lightweight belt against the only man to defeat him, undefeated Gray “The Bully” Maynard at UFC 125 on January 1, 2011.
The winners of these two fights will then face each other at a later date to determine the Undisputed UFC Lightweight Champion. Both current champions will be defending their titles at events that will go down in history. Henderson defends his at the very last WEC event before the official end of the company and Edgar defends his in the first event after the completed merge.
Current Featherweight Champion, Jose Aldo, has already been recognized as the UFC Featherweight Champion and the winner of the upcoming Dominick Cruz/Scott Jorgensen fight will be recognized as the UFC Bantamweight Champion.
With the addition of the WEC Lightweights, the possible future match-ups are endless and with so many lightweight, we could also see some of the smaller fighters dropping down to 145 and compete there.
