Little Men Do Big Business for WEC

Jens Pulver and Urijah Faber are proving that the little guys can punch their weight at the box office.

After a sell out of almost 8,000 tickets in the lower bowl of the ARCO Arena in Sacramento, Calif., World Extreme Cagefighting announced today that it is opening the upper sections of the arena for World Extreme Cagefighting 34: Faber vs Pulver. The additional seating will be priced at $35 (not including applicable services or taxes). On Sunday June 1, MMA pioneer Jens Pulver challenges WEC Featherweight Champion Urijah Faber in a bout where only one of these 145-pound fighters will emerge with the victory in the most important featherweight bout of all-time.

“WEC fans bought all of the tickets so fast that we decided to open up more seats upstairs” said Peter Dropick, Vice President of Operations and Production for the WEC. “We originally planned to sell seats only in the lower sections for this event, but it’s going to be such an exciting night of fights that we want to accommodate as many fans as possible to see the live action”.

World Extreme Cagefighting 34: Faber vs Pulver is a top notch card that features the much anticipated featherweight title fight between Urijah Faber and Jens Pulver and the bantamweight title fight between Miguel Torres and Yoshiro Maeda. The card is also stacked with WEC notables such as Rob McCullough, Chase Beebe, Jeff Curran and Mark Munoz, the former All-American wrestler who will be making his highly anticipated WEC debut.

In Boxing, the heavier weight classes have traditionally drawn the crowds. Recently, that trend has changed. A dearth of talent among the big men has coincided with an explosion of excitement in the lighter weight classes. As a result - men such as Marco Antonio Barrera and Erik Morales have graduated to the same level of superstar status once reserved for the heavies. Mixed Martial Arts fans seem to be embracing the exciting lighter weight classes in the same manner.

The UFC are planning to restructure the WEC (World Extreme Cagefighting) to make it the place to see the best of the lower weight categories.

Prior to UFC 83: Serra vs St Pierre 2, UFC President Dana White was asked, at a UFC Fight Club at a question-and-answer session, if his promotion planned to bring in a 145 pound weight class. He responded:

"That's why we bought the WEC.

We're going to make the WEC the smaller weights and the UFC will be the heavier weights. We'll probably take some of the guys in the higher weights, the champions over there and bring them into UFC. We're still trying to figure that out."

The WEC has built its reputation by showcasing the lower weight categories.

World Extreme Cagefighting features 135 -(bantamweight) and 145-pound (featherweight) weight classes as well as 155, 170, 185 and 205. There are no really big stars in the higher weight classes - so folding them and transferring the fighters to the UFC will have little or no impact on the senior promotion.