The Ultimate Fighting Championship UFC later bought it out. To be exact, Zuffa took over both the UFC and WEC. Zuffa is a sports promotion company based in the United States specializing in mixed martial arts (MMA). It owns most of the top MMA organizations today: Ultimate Fighting Championship UFC, World Extreme Cagefighting WEC, and the now defunct Pride Fighting Championships (Pride FC).
Now the World Extreme Cage fighting remains as a smaller sister corporation to the UFC. Their fights are much less hyped-up and occurs in a smaller octagon cage. The focus of their weight division primarily is on the lighter weight classes to avoid competition with the UFC. The lighter weight classes range from 125 to 155 lbs – primarily their bantamweight and featherweight divisions.
Zuffa is separating out the organizations based on weight classes. The Ultimate Fighting Championship UFC has the top 5 heaviest weight divisions: Heavyweight (206 – 265 lbs), Light Heavyweight (186 – 205 lbs), Middleweight (171 – 185 lbs), Welterweight (156 - 170 lbs), and Lightweight (145 - 155 lbs.).
World Extreme Cage fighting changed its focus by abandoning their heavyweight and middleweight divisions and putting more emphasis on their bantamweight and featherweight divisions. These are the two divisions that are not in the UFC.
There is a new weight division in the WEC called Flyweight, which will basically take the place of the welterweight division. They named it flyweight so that it would not be confused with UFC’s welterweight class. Again, it is another way for Zuffa to try and diversify their MMA market.
The WEC airs on the cable television channel Versus and also The Sports Network in Canada. It is said that the WEC will be starting to show some fights on Pay-Per-View starting in mid 2009.
