You could call what we all saw last night a lot of things. One of those things is NOT boring. Although the lack of those three little letters W-E-C does seem disingenuous to what Reed Harris has built, it does make sense. UFC sells on name alone and if you can make the common viewer who doesn’t follow MMA think “Oh UFC is on tonight with some new colors. I’m going to order” that’s perfect. Hopefully this will be the highest viewed WEC event in the history of the company so now we can start getting these guys the recognition they deserve.

WEC definitely benefited from the free prelimary fights on Spike TV. I told my family who don’t follow MMA that much that, “Heyfree MMA is on Spike,” to which they replied “Why didn’t you just say UFC is on?” Leonard Garcia vs “The Korean Zombie” Chan Sung Jung lit it up with a great 3 round fight. Wild hay makers just laying it all out there for the world to see. I don’t agree with the decision but that happens some times, nothing we can do about it. Pettis vs. Karalexis was a fun affair ending with a nice Triangle Choke early in the second round.

The main PPV card didn’t slow the frenetic pace set by the Spike prelims. Scott Jorgenson avenged his loss against Antonio Banuelos in a fun 3 round decision. Shane Roller and Anthony Njokuani fought for what, in my opinion, could have possibly been the right to fight the winner of Henderson vs. Cerrone II. Roller was able to get in and use his wrestling to muscle Njokuani around eventually taking it to the ground, finding a Rear Naked Choke a little over half way through the 1st round. It was great hearing Mark Laimon frantically yell at Roller coded instructions like “Tyson Griffin” and “Florian vs. Gomi” using those names as comparisons to the situation Roller was in. Him and Kenny Florian’s brother, Keith Florian, have to be two of the loudest corner men in MMA .

Then we moved in to the top 3 bouts on the card starting with Brown vs. Gamburyan. This had possible Featherweight title implications written all over it but I don’t know why you would want to fight Aldo right now but its part of the job description right? Manny circled Brown for most of the fight until Brown got in close and Manny caught Brown with a nice short right hand that dropped him.  Manny is a thickly built fighter and it would be interesting to see if Aldo can chop away at him like he did Faber. Next we had the rematch of one of the fights of the year from 2009 as we saw Henderson vs. Cerrone II. I was expecting a great 5 round knock ‘em down, drag it out brawl like their first fight. Nope. Instead we saw Henderson grab a single leg, force Cerrone up against the cage then knee him there a little bit before putting him to the ground and getting a Guillotine choke in the first round. In my opinion his next opponent should be Shane Roller, who “BenHen” has already defeated so that could be fun to see. If anything, hearing Laimon shout
Modern Warfare 2 references will be a treat.

The main event was Jose Aldo vs. Urijah Faber for the WEC Featherweight title. If Faber was going to win I figured he was going to have to go in and use some wrestling and just try to control Aldo on the ground, maybe showing us Aldo’s ground game. That was not the case, we had Aldo kicking Faber’s legs out from under him for all five rounds, seeing Aldo thoroughly dominate the final three rounds, eventually leading to a Unanimous Decision win for Aldo over hometown favourite Faber.

WEC 48 delivered like the WEC always does. Other than the Garcia vs. Jung decision there is nothing that people should legitimately complain about. Man its been a long month of MMA and this has been the best show of the month for sure.

You can follow Mike MaZZacane on Twitter @MaZZacreMMA