The WEC Illusion: Why Ben Henderson Doesn't Belong in a Real Main Event

But I think that Ben has progressed a ton. He was a low level prospect when the WEC signed him, but at this point I think he could hang with the elite of the world. Maybe this is the reverse of all Japanese LW are elite, but I’d take him over everyone not named Penn or Florian or Maynard.

Cantwell/Stann fought at 205.

You’ve got a point, Jonathan, but it’s only convincing to the hardcore fan universe.

Prestige is one qualification for a bout, but not the most important, and not even the most compelling. Why have Gatti/Ward 2?

And, as you know, MMA is even more capricious in its star-making than boxing – Jung came into the event an intriguing nobody, and emerged a cult icon. Action is marketable. Action sells. Cerrone/Henderson is a matchmaker’s best stab at recapturing lightning in a bottle. It didn’t play out that way, but nothing wrong with that.

And the card did have the WEC’s only representative of the truly elite – Mr. Aldo – and the best fights of any card this year Maybe ever. Hard for me to find an element of the card to be critical about, especially a rematch of 2009’s FOTY.

You’d have a better case here if Cerrone/Henderson was the main and not the co-main. I don’t think anybody bought the PPV because they thought that fight was genuinely prestigious or important. They bought it for the actual main, and maybe secondarily because Cerrone/Henderson I was so entertaining.

It’s true that the top WEC lightweights are frequently over-ranked, though, certainly.

Doesn’t the name “Chael Sonnen” kind of kill your point here about success in the WEC being “illusory”? Condit’s still ranked # 12 on this very website, and dropped the closest of decisions to Martin Kampmann, a guy who was one win away from a title shot. Cerrone/Henderson/Stann/Cantwell? Okay. But don’t paint the entire WEC roster (or alumni) with the same brush here.

agreed that we need a dose of reality on where these guys stand. but to be fair, the card was almost entirely sold based on the main event, not on henderson-cerrone. and the UFC has the occasional lackluster co-main event also, such as daley-hazelett on 108. so i don’t think the WEC has done anything different from what any other promoter tries to do.

still, yeah, a lot of the WEC lightweights are artificially boosted because they are facing easier competition. i think the carlos condit analogy fits a guy like donald cerrone pretty well. ben henderson, however, is a pretty intriguing prospect and while it’s doubtful he’ll ever be UFC LW champion, i don’t think he’ll flame out. i think he does belong in the UFC much in the same way that daley or hazelett belong, and those guys got to co-main event billing also.

Whether or not the WEC LW title is a paper belt or not, I will ALWAYS buy a PPV with Ben Henderson on it.

Why? Because he has shown me, in his last handful of fights, that he is an exciting fighter. Knocking him for his fight at “AldovsFaber 48” being boring is knocking a vital aspect of the MMA, and combat sports in general, game. Fights can end at any time.

I haven’t seen Ben main event any UFC cards, maybe I missed that PPV. Ben Henderson DOES deserve to be in a real WEC main event. How can you argue tthat?

The point about Henderson is spot on, with the exception of comparing him to Stann and Cantwell (two guys whose quality was measured against guys like Doug friggin’ Marshall). Benson’s a quality fighter, but certainly not someone who should be ranked top 10.

The rest of Snowden’s post lacks context

Faber and Torres were the best of the bunch in divisions that were just finding their legs in America. For Torres, he had legitimacy because Mizugaki and Maeda were both ranked at the time of fighting him, so it’s not like he owed his ranking to “mere publicity” (although having him in the P4P lists was certainly ridiculous). Faber’s rank was always shaky, but this was no different than for another “icon of the overrated” in Kid Yamamoto. So what do we say about the rest of the world’s FW’s? The situation is similar to the LHW split back in the Pride/UFC era where everyone bitched about who was better: Chuck or Wand.

Hindsight, 20/20, and all that. This kind of hindsight criticism always slides on a slippery slope, and we could just as easily apply it to fighters like Mousasi, Lawal, Jones, Hioki, Aoki, Alvarez (getting beat by Aoki in the span of a minute doesn’t look so good now does it?), etc. Until these divisions (just talking about FW and BW here) have more time to grow and interact, it’s kind of dumb to sit here and question the quality with definitive statements.

Aside from which, the swing can be just as telling as the pitch. If you’re gonna sit here, and question Aldo’s status, that’s your choice. But if you’re gonna sit here and question Aldo’s ability as if his precision, patience, and overall abilities both on the feet and on the ground aren’t “world class” then I don’t what to tell you. That might not have been your point, but with your mountain of generalizations, it’s hard to tell.

Also, it’s not like co main events have some kind of rich history in MMA. Off the top of my head, and with a little help from fight finder, if in we include Dream, Strikeforce, UFC, etc. we’ve got: Aoki vs. Hirota/Shaolin/Hansen (none of these guys are currently ranked at LW except for Hirota who is as questionable as Benson), Mir/Carwin, Wand/Bisping, Marquardt/Sonnen, Hazelett/Daley, Mir/Kongo, Koscheck/Johnson, Swick/Hardy, Shields/Miller (if Miller was ranked, it was just as questionable as Bendo’s), Arlovski/Rogers…

Some quality fights, but it’s not like they exist on a different planet than Henderson/Cerrone.

All I’ve got to say is that I had a lot more fun watching WEC 48 than I have watching any other card in AGES. I cannot remember a card that was that much fun. In fact, the WEC probably has the most fun cards of any promotion going. I gladly paid for it, I’ll be buying the next one too. Sure, the lw division is not the most talented one on earth, but they put on good fights anyway. And every promotion claims their champions are world champs. That’s just standard puffery. I’m not getting conned, because I know what it is and I’m glad to buy it. If anything, I wish the UFC’s average card was as much fun to watch as even the average WEC card.

To me all this really does is reiterate my thoughts that the WEC has no business having a lightweight division. It doesn’t make sense having fringe top fifteen ranked fighters on the same level as legitimate number one ranked fighters. That’s as far as I will agree with you. In the UFC Donald Cerrone would have about as much success as Mac Danzig. Its crazy to write off the WEC’s featherweight division because some of the top fighters were unsuccessful earlier in their careers at higher weights. That’s like saying the UFC lightweight division is poor because BJ has lost twice to GSP. Its just not a statement you can make. Comparing weight classes is always a bit fishy. All we really know is those are the best feather and bantamweight fighters in the world, and the put on a hell of a show. Get the lightweights out of there, maybe start a flyweight division.

and see how many have devalued Strikeforce titles as meaningless. Because Aoki vs. Melendez is about 20x more relevant than Bendo vs. anybody in the WEC. So was Hendo vs. Shields. Hell, so is Overeem vs. Rogers. And none of those belts mean much to me, but at least involve top 5-10 fighters.

WEC LW belt means nothing and I think it makes their FW and BW titles look less important.

You have a promotion, your fighters fight each other, you get the most successful and exciting guys and put them at the top of your card. Then you take this card, you market it, and people pay you money to watch it.

I really don’t think this is uncovering any great marketing conspiracy on the part of the WEC, or Zuffa, or even shedding light on something “wrong.”

The WEC didn’t hold back some better fighters they have in their back pocket, this was for the title in their best and possibly second-best division, with the biggest marquee names in the WEC. What else are they supposed to do? Borrow BJ Penn and Frankie Edgar?

Can’t agree with this article, he beat the “who’s who” of the WEC roster at 155. Just because it’s not the UFC dosn’t mean the champion shouldn’t co-headline a PPV…WTF? lol

I agree with somethings in this article. But the bit about fighter being “sold as champions” to us the public is absurd.
We were “sold” that faber was a dominant champ? I don’t think so, go back 3 years and he looked unstoppable.
But saying this only happened in the WEC is ludacris as well. Remember the Machida era?

But you believe that ben henderson is the brian stann of his weight division without even seeing him fight in the UFC, you have him written off as not belonging in a real main event. If Henderson, the WEC’s champ, were to battle Frank Edgar, the UFC’s champ.

I would bet on henderson winning the decision via his wrestling.

Kind of a weird article. Not sure that I think Ben isn’t good or doesn’t deserve to be on the main card for WEC, but I do find it odd that Zuffa has an overlapping weight class competing with the UFC weight class. I know Dana mentioned eventually combining them; which I’d like to see (heck, I’d like to see all of WEC in the UFC) I do agree with some of the points though that Henderson should be ranked below many of the top UFC LWs

Like a lot of you, I can’t agree with this. Put up a rebuttal over at Fightlinker.

It means that as a fighter, you are considered one of the very best fighters at your weight class. All the Manny & Mike Brown hate is undeserved; the premise behind them is that they didn’t perform well at Lightweight- well guess what: that’s not their optimal weight class! BJ Penn (although inconsistent) is a badass dude, and an all time great, and he looked like ABSOLUTE GARBAGE at 170 against GSP their 2’nd time out. Fighters cannot be lambasted and judged harshly for poor performance outside of their natural weight class, it’s just not fair.

Personally, I don’t feel ignorant when I say that Jose Aldo is one of the best fighters in the world because I have eyes. I understand quite a bit about the technical aspects of the game, and so when a guy like Jose Aldo goes out there, displays excellent footwork & head movement, pinpoint accuracy coupled with flawless timing and crippling power, and absolutely shitkicks a very good fighter in Urijah Faber, it’s a thing to behold.

When I see a guy like Bendo quickly dominate a very tough & skilled fighter in Cowboy Cerrone, and show excellence in all areas of the game (transitioning, clinch/ cage control, good GnP, and then the ability to execute and finish submissions) like he did, then I think to myself “Ok, this is a guy who could be considered as a top 10 fighter”.

Not that I disagree Miller would trounce Benderson (he would) but he wasn’t the IFL Champ. He was in talks to fight Schulz for the strap (and would have been a heavy favorite to win and become champ) when the promotion folded. Dan, on the other hand, was the Middleweight Champ, which may be where the confusion comes from.

Again, though, Benderson wouldn’t crack the top-10 of UFC lightweights.

I hope you didn’t order the PPV. You didn’t deserve to watch it.

Pointing out that the guys in WEC weightclasses that also exist in the UFC aren’t as good? Holy Shit! I never could have put that together on my own.

I totally agree that Henderson and Cerone probably would not contend in the UFC LW class, however you never know. But to use that to throw guys like Aldo, Faber and Brown under the bus is just troll hackery.

Bendo is tough as nails. I use to write him off all the time, quite like a always write off Jake Sheilds, but they keep proving me wrong. i think Bendo would do great in the UFC and if he did make the jump he would be at least mid tier for sure. The dude is way to durable.