WEC 53: Last Call
by on December 14, 2010

This Thursday marks the last World Extreme Cagefighting event. It is a bitter sweet end to the promotion. The WEC merges with the UFC in January and the fighters will migrate there. The last few years the WEC has been home for many of the world's best bantamweights, featherweights, and lightweights. WEC 53 will be the last time we see these fighters in the 25-foot diameter cage, instead they'll soon be fighting in a 30-foot octagon.

The WEC does not leave without a bang though. WEC 53 features two title fights and is the last chance for fighters to go all out in the promotion known for its fast paced action before heading to the big show.

In the main event of the evening, reigning WEC lightweight champion Ben "Smooth" Henderson (12-1) defends his title against Anthony "Showtime" Pettis (11-1). These two fighters have 14 submission wins between their combined 23 career victories; if the fight hits the ground we can expect some great grappling. The winner of this fight will take on the winner of Frankie Edgar versus Gray Maynard to unify the WEC and UFC lightweight title belts.

The co-main event of the night, current WEC bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz (16-1) defends his belt against Scott Jorgensen (11-3). Jorgensen is on a five fight win streak and Cruz's lone career loss was at the hands of Urijah Faber (24-4) in 2007 in an attempt at the featherweight title belt. The winner will enter the UFC as the first bantamweight champion in the organization.

WEC 53 airs live on Versus this Thursday, December 16 at 6pm PT / 9pm ET.

The full fight card for WEC 53:

Main Card

• Benson Henderson vs. Anthony Pettis (for lightweight title)
• Dominick Cruz vs. Scott Jorgensen (for bantamweight title)
• Donald Cerrone vs. Chris Horodecki
• Bart Palaszewski vs. Kamal Shalorus

Preliminary Card

• Shane Roller vs. Jamie Varner
• Ivan Menjivar vs. Brad Pickett
• Danny Downes vs. Tiequan Zhang
• Ken Stone vs. Eddie Wineland
• Danny Castillo vs. Will Kerr
• Yuri Alcantara vs. Ricardo Lamas
• Renan Barao vs. Chris Cariaso

 |  (17) Comments mike5k: Nice piece HC, this event and the WEC as a whole isn't getting enough play as far as I'm concerned. I loved their events and while I'm happy for the fighters I actually think the merger will take away a degree of the excitement. D_V: I thought they should have kept the WEC separate and on Vs but just changed the name from WEC to UFC Extreme, or something along those lines to keep the UFC brand name. WEC cards once a month would be awesome and they could have just put the main events onto UFC PPVs anyways but I understand why they did what they did. I think we'll see more UFC events on Vs now. They should keep the UFNs and TUF finales on Spike and move the euro cards to Vs. They really want to have 2 separate TV deals and I think they need to make sure Vs doesn't get lost here. D_V: Ben was almost finished a while back. Who the fuck was that against, anyways? It was before the Cerrone and Varner fights. Pettis hits hard, he might not win this but he certainly can KO Bendo The Hitman: A good card to go out on. I hope it ends up being an exciting night of fights. GO HARD: War Anthony Njokuani!!!! q; D i love Njokuani. Middleweight: im going to miss WEC man, their fights on wicked man. GO HARD: Weigh Ins are about to start.. anybody gonna check them out? arlovskiviako: No.
WHO WINS THE MAIN EVENT AT UFC 162 BETWEEN ANDERSON SILVA AND CHRIS WEIDMAN?
Silva via Decision
Silva via TKO/KO
Silva via Submission
Weidman via Decision
Weidman via TKO/KO
Weidman via Submission
TAKE ANOTHER POLL!