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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
Along with today's revelation that Jose Aldo and his new UFC Featherweight Championship would appear on the New Year's Day UFC 125 event, Dana White also revealed the plans for the other WEC titles that will be merged into the UFC.
Both the WEC Bantamweight Championship and WEC Lightweight Championship will be defended on the final WEC card on December 16, and the winners from that event will be set up for big UFC debuts.
Like Jose Aldo and his Featherweight Championship, the winner of the Dominick Cruz-Scott Jorgensen fight will be recognized immediately as the UFC Bantamweight Champion. For the winner of the Benson Henderson-Anthony Pettis fight, while they won't immediately bring Championship gold to the table, they will get their biggest career opportunity.
White revealed that the winner of that fight will face the winner of the UFC 125 main event between Frankie Edgar and Gray Maynard in a unification bout for the Undisputed UFC Lightweight Championship.
Although previous WEC Champions from other weight classes have simply gone into the UFC fold, such as Carlos Condit when the WEC welterweight division was folded into the UFC after 2008, White said they are treating it like when they brought in the fighters from PRIDE and had unification bouts between Dan Henderson and both Quinton "Rampage" Jackson and Anderson Silva.
The lightweight division, until today's announcement, had remained the only weight class that overlapped the two organizations, and now the WEC's lightweights can attempt to establish themselves in the UFC's premiere lightweight division.
Penick's Analysis: Ben Henderson hasn't faced the type of competition that could put him into the top 10 in the lightweight division, but if he gets past a very tough Anthony Pettis in December, he's going to get his opportunity to not only prove he's a top ten fighter, but possibly claim a spot as the best lightweight in the world. This announcement today has opened up so many possibilities for so many fighters, and this is a clear example of that. The WEC will go out with a bang on December 16, but the fighters have an immense opportunity in front of them now.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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