The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: What's Going on With the "Aldo vs. Faber" Pay-Per-View?

Thank you, Mike, for reminding me why I come to BE.

I’m not sure if this has been the long-term plan all along or if Zuffa just realized, “Oh shit, we’ve got a PPV in April that no one is gonna buy!”

Really, I would do the HARD SELL that WEC guys always go all-out and never fail to entertain to take advantage and quite possibly quell the dissatisfaction stemming from 112.

For my part, I’m telling everyone and their mom about the PPV next week. I love WEC with a passion.

I’m not happy I have to miss this PPV – it will be awesome. I want Aldo, Hendo, and MTB to win.

and make them show this one for free also. haha.

Kinda like how CBS promotes “Saturday Night Fights”, as opposed to Strikeforce.

I’m getting all OCD’ed on this… why can’t I take off that space between the video and the next line of text? grrrrr.

…so they can assess whether or not to follow through with a merger, rather than something they truly intend to do on a regular basis. the lack of wec branding your mentioned seems to support that idea. let’s hope so anyway.

granted, they did stack this card, but i don’t know that they can do that every time… or their versus cards will suffer (see supposed wec 49 headliner: varner/shalorus).

BE is looking at any little thing to jump on Zuffa. UFC and WEC are both Zuffa products. Zuffa will put it’s marketing power behind WEC 48. UFC is the biggest and strongest brand in MMA. Putting on these PPV’s cost millions…. Zuffa should do everything it can to make money.

Reed Harris is the $kala of the WEC, basically.

At least they are trying something to give the WEC PPV a chance. I still think it was major screw up to have the event in Sacramento. If they wanted PPV buys than put the event outside Northern California so those people would buy the PPV instead of tickets. I think it’s easy to sell tickets in an unestablished market.

Well, it is certainly interesting how many buys this will get now. Thoughts anyone?

You could look at it one of two ways:

-that it’s counterintuitive to mask the WEC card as a UFC product given that Zuffa is looking to see the WEC succeed on its own.
or…
- that Zuffa is looking to see the WEC succeed on its own, therefore, introducing the WEC with the UFC’s presence allows the PPV to better succeed.

Zuffa might be worried about consumer confusion with a WEC promoted pay-per-view. But if that’s the case, why go through with a WEC pay-per-view in the first place?

The answer to this question is painfully simple: PPV can bring in more revenue, and giving the WEC a little UFC flair maximizes the chances of this event being “successful”. I actually like the fact that Rogan and Goldberg will be doing commentary (if for none other than the fact that Bonnar is terrible). Or perhaps this is the type of experiment that will allow them to decide whether or not to merge the WEC, or keep it a separate entity indefinitely?

I realize Bloody Elbow needs to fill it’s ‘glass half empty’ quota on all Zuffa related news items, but there’s nothing sinister going on: just looks like Zuffa showing the virgin on prom night how to put a condom on a banana before sending her off to the big dance.

I’d pay just for Henderson/Cerrone II, theoretically.

WEC is synonomous with free broadcasts from small venues on VS. In other words the letters WEC is not associated with a PPV purchase or being worth 50 bucks. They have to change the focus away from the promotion.
I think they figure that they will only do this once or twice a year so there is no real need to bring those guys to the UFC. My sense is that leaving the situation as is will result in more higher quality fights for FREE rather than them being absorbed by the UFC.

Free high quality fights on live TV is my cheif MMA interest. I know all you rich guys out there want all of the best fighters in the UFC so they can have 20 great PPV’s a year. You ballers dont mind the extra $$$ bill, but what about people like me who are to broke to buy a wart off of a cucumber? Just messin, but I think we should cherish free AND STRIKEFORCE! (i know, Bellator too, but they haven’t blown me away yet this season)

They know that nobody will buy this event. That’s why they are doing anything they can to save the idea to do future WEC PPV.

I’m not buying it.
Hell, I’m not even going to the bar to watch it for free!

First good read I have had on BE in a bit. I totally agree if Dana wants to add new weight classes heres answer.

So, Buffer, Goldie, Rogan, Dana… I bet hey use the UFCs octagon too. What about my wife Brittany Palmer? She better be there! Maybe Arriany gonna work it too.

If this isn’t evidence that the WEC brand needs to be rolled into the UFC permanently then nothing is. As much as I like Martinez (I do think he’s a better announcer than Buffer) and I like the WEC product if they truly want to make the lighter weight divisions more popular they need to lose the WEC name and roll them into the UFC.
Or.. make the WEC the feeder org everyone thought it would be and roll the LW/FW/BW into the UFC. If they would have done this earlier they would have had less issues late last year, early this year coming up with compelling main events since you had 3 more weight classes to draw from.

I’m a huge WEC fan but it really doesn’t make any sense to keep the little guys off the UFC name, for money, exposure, for limelight they deserve.

Looks like one that a local boxing promoter nails to telephone poles

I think we should try to get the people attending the event live to start a “MERGE” chant.

STEP 1: See article above

STEP 2: Give Frankie Edgar the LW belt. Build some publicity around him and have him lose to BJ in a rematch

STEP 3: Move Frankie down to the weight class he should be in. Instant contender for the winner of Aldo/Faber.

STEP 4: Merge the brands to support Zuffa’s oversaturation of MMA

The WEC yes it is like a miner leage to the ufc but it plays it part it on tv ones a week promotes UFC and WEC events you watch it hoping the UFC is going to be better so you buy the ufc pay per vw it is a tool that does a great jop for up and coming fighters and those fighter that cant cut it in the ufc no disrespect kind of f#$% up how they did the ad and did not even say WEC in it. but that just big brother taking all the credit

While I didn’t read every comment above so this may sounds repetitive, the main reason the UFC/Zuffa is trying their best to keep the WEC around is so they don’t over-saturate the market with UFC events (which they are coming close to doing). By keeping the UFC and WEC separate they can continue to hold events without people getting tried of a new UFC event every weekend (and having to constantly throw down $50). At the moment, only hardcore fans watch the WEC (which is awesome… love the little guys) and by promoting it as “The UFC Presents” it is going to get the casual fan interested especially when you consider Dana White is going to be promoting it and throw in well known announcers like Rogan and Goldberg (and Buffer). If this event is a hit, you will slowly start to see the UFC separate itself from the WEC when it comes to promoting WEC PPV events. Once they have that separation between the brands, they can start holding more WEC events (free and on PPV) on weekends where the UFC doesn’t have anything going on. The reality of the situation is, Zuffa probably could have an MMA event almost every weekend if they build up the WEC correctly (which they are) and not over-saturate the market with the UFC brand. While it may hurt some of the current fighters on the WEC roster financially and in terms of their marketability, it is going to be better for the fighters on the WEC roster down the line when the brand it finally built up. Short-term it would be better for everyone if the brands merged, but long-term it would be a lot better if they stayed as two separate successful promotions

I dont get what the problem is?

I mean what the UFC cant try and help sell this event?

I mean you already have people saying they wont pay for this cause its WEC and is normally free or that Zuffa doesnt need more money.

They barely do 500k viewers on Versus, the WEC brand isnt big.

You have the best WEC card probably ever, its stacked, the best FW title fight, and probably best LW title rematch, a ton of other great fighters and fights, and yet if they just did it like WEC normally does it, nobody would know or care.

Atleast having Mike/Joe do the event it gives it that familiar feel, they are the best team, doing the prelims on Spike rather than Versus assures more people would watch then if they did it on Versus, that Dana is way more known and popular and him promoting the event goes along way more than Harris does.

Now this will only be for the PPV I assume, they will go back to doing shit on Versus etc, back to Bonnar etc broadcasting, though would anyone mind if Joe/Mike took over full time duty for broadcasting? I wouldnt.

But this is only to help sell the event.

I dont see why that is wrong.

Funny thing is, had they not done this, this article would have been how Zuffa doesnt care about WEC, how Dana wont even give his time to help promote them, how WEC really is Zuffa little bitch that they feed table scraps, how they wont even do anything to help them.

Thats exactly what the article woudl be and everyone who comes to this site knows this is 100 percent true. It would be a rip Dana article, well that wouldnt be anything new, 95 percent of UFC articles on here rip Dana in some way. But had they not done this to try and sell the event, they would have been dissed for not doing anything, not caring or helping the WEC, for not offering to use the mighty UFC brand to help this event.

Good. Bring the lighter classes in, wait another year or two and then add cruiserweight, and call it done. 8 classes, 8 champions, for a sport contested in an Octagon. A title fight in every UFC PPV. Come on Zuffa, it’s inevitable.

Fighters have a very short window of opportunity to become mega stars. Guys like Faber and Aldo should be making big money on the big stage. Merging the WEC into the UFC will bring more title fights and huge talent. Enough of the cockteasing already. Give us the goods.