It's easy to marginalize World Extreme Cagefighting. Of course, it's easy to marginalize any promotion that's not UFC, but WEC suffers from being the little brother to the 600-pound gorilla itself. Zuffa's promotional efforts are generally focused on UFC and their pay-per-views as opposed to the free shows WEC puts on Versus. It's not helping that they're on a network that frequently airs such fringe sports as steer wrestling, competitive logcutting, and the NHL. (I tease because I love, hockey.) And while UFC showcases the "prestige" weight classes, WEC is filled with the little guys, closing down every division above 155 this past winter and absorbing the fighters into the UFC.
Well, perhaps the remaining fighters had an axe to grind in Vegas last night. WEC 42 put on a show that, excepting perhaps Silva/Griffin, was more exciting than UFC 101 in every way. The night was capped by a four-minute slugfest that saw unheralded Brian Bowles knock out bantamweight champion and consensus pound-for-pound top fiver, Miguel Angel Torres.
The first three fights on WEC 42's main card played out to almost the same results as UFC 101's: decision, decision, stoppage. The difference was the way they happened. Both decisions were tightly-contested, split affairs. Leonard Garcia's win over Jameel Massouh saw him go momentarily unconscious in a choke, but he powered through (and was lucky enough to not have the official notice), surviving a sloppy but exciting affair.
Takeya Mizugaki's reward for stepping in as a replacement and being the first man to take Torres to five rounds was a tough match against Jeff Curran, who was coming off a brutal trio of losses to top competition. Mizugaki controlled the fight, taking it to the ground on his terms. But whereas at UFC 101 we saw Josh Neer and Kendall Grove get lost on the bottom, Curran worked the whole time and nearly stole the fight in the last round when he forced Mizugaki to outlast a deep triangle until the final bell.
Instead of a controversial stoppage like former WEC fighter Johny Hendricks' win on Saturday, Danny Castillo finished his fight clean. He became the first man to blemish Ricardo Lamas' record in an exciting brawl that saw Castillo put Lamas' lights out with a huge overhand right straight down the pipe. Dominick Cruz then probably earned himself the next shot at the bantamweight title when he unanimously outpointed Joe Benavidez in a fast-paced battle with a lot of traded shots and a couple of decent submission attempts. Benavidez, too, experienced his first MMA loss in the fight.
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