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World Extreme Cagefighting made tremendous strides in 2007 in its first full year under the ownership of Zuffa, which is also the parent company of the UFC. Under Zuffa's guidance, the WEC upgraded its television deal from HDNet's reach of six million homes to Versus, which is currently available in 77 million. The promotion also imported several stars from the ill-fated World Fighting Alliance, a fight organization Zuffa acquired select assets from in December 2006.
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Some of those "assets" include the promotion's current lightweight champion, "Razor" Rob McCullough, and featherweight champion Urijah Faber, who doubles as the franchise face of the WEC. As strong of a campaign as 2007 was for the WEC, the plan is to take things up a notch or two in 2008, according to the company's vice president of operations and production, Peter Dropick.
Dropick, tapped by Zuffa to head the WEC following eight years as an executive at the former Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim, revealed in an exclusive interview with CBSSports.com that the promotion not only is planning to promote multiple shows outside of its home base in Las Vegas but is eyeing pay-per-view as well. Dropick also spoke at length about the WEC's additional plans for 2008.
CBSSports.com: Are there any new plans for the WEC in 2008 that you can reveal?
Peter Dropick: We're going on the road. We were based in Las Vegas at the Hard Rock during 2007. We're taking the events on the road and we have our first event on the road in Albuquerque on Feb. 13, which we've announced. I have plans to look at a couple more markets outside of Vegas in 2008.
I still want to have some presence in Vegas but there are a few other markets we're looking at. They range from Southern California, Northern California, Texas, Oklahoma, New Jersey and Florida. A lot of them are mid-markets (as) we're not getting overly aggressive and thinking we can fill a coliseum, or something to the effect. So we're being smart and looking at (which cities) are some of our top TV markets on Versus. We're also looking at the hometowns of some of our top fighters and just general good MMA markets or fight towns, and Albuquerque is one of them.
Q: There's been a rumor that the WEC show scheduled for March could be held in Sacramento in Urijah Faber's hometown. Is there any truth to that?
A: It's a possibility. We're still looking at dates and venues and our availability for TV, if it's Versus or possibly ... we are looking at a pay-per-view opportunity as well. I hope to have that wrapped up within a week, hopefully. That's obviously a fight (Faber vs. Jens Pulver for the WEC featherweight title) that makes sense, and I think everyone wants that fight.
Q: I'm glad you brought PPV up because I was going to ask you about that. PPV can be a tough nut to crack for a fight promotion. What needs to happen before the WEC transitions from being televised for free on Versus to going on PPV? What do you feel are some of the other things the WEC needs to bring to the table?
A: I think we need to keep growing our audience on Versus. Our ratings have been trending upwards every fight, which we're very happy about. I think we need to expand our market a bit more. We have been based strictly in Vegas. By going to new cities you are growing your audience.
And I think we also need the right card as well. Everyone wants to see Jens and Urijah fight, and that's very attractive but we want a solid card from top to bottom. If there's (only) one superfight in a sense then I'm not sure that makes sense from a financial standpoint. We want to be smart about it. We have a good roadmap, and we're not just going to throw it on pay-per-view and try to sell out a big arena just to say we did it; that's not in my plans.
Q: How many shows does the WEC plan to run in 2008?
A: It's going to be a minimum of six fights. That's what I have scheduled now and I could potentially add a few more to that. In addition to that we have the WrekCage taped program on Versus. That program will be a combination of fights that didn't make our live broadcasts along with some of our best fights that have aired already. So we have eight WrekCage programs in 2008. That's six live and eight WrekCage.
