Donald Cerrone vs. Ben Henderson Booked for September
With a rematch against WEC lightweight title-holder Jamie Varner postponed indefinitely, contender Donald Cerrone has been booked to fight Ben Henderson at a yet-unannounced September WEC event, according to MMA Madness.
The bout is the first confirmed for the Versus-televised card, which is rumored to possibly take place in Cincinnati on a date to-be-announced.
Cerrone (10-1) suffered a controversial split decision loss to Varner in January, but rebounded with a first-round submission of James Krause at WEC 41 earlier this month to earn another shot at the title. A rematch between Varner and Cerrone was expected to take place this fall, but Varner’s hand remains broken, forcing him out of the rumored meeting.
Henderson has won 8-straight fights, including back-to-back WEC victories over Anthony Njokuani and Shane Roller.
It has not yet been confirmed whether Cerrone-Henderson will be for an interim lightweight title.
Stay tuned to MMAFrenzy.com for the latest WEC news and WEC rumors.
[Pictured: Donald Cerrone]
Tags: Ben Henderson, Donald Cerrone
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If Varner is still out, Cerrone should fight someone else for the interim belt and then that winner should fight Varner when he’s ready to go because that belt has to be defended.
There isn’t a whole lot of depth at lightweight behind Cerrone and Varner. What you outlined is what is expected to happen: the winner of Cerrone-Henderson is crowned interim champ and will then fight Varner whenever he’s able to return to unify the belts. I would’ve preferred a rematch between Cerrone and Rob McCullough but Henderson did look good in his win over Roller.
Isn’t this (rice) Cerrone’s last contract fight in the WEC? And if he beats Henderson and gets the “interim” title does he have the “champions” clause in his contract that keeps him in the WEC? He wants to fight Miller in the UFC..?
anyways back to the subject should be a hell of a fight, both are agressive and very talented, I do think that Cerrone is going to win by sub (triangle is my choice)
That could be why the title implications are as yet uncertain. They could be negotiating with him whether or not he wants to look at that champions clause, or possibly go to the UFC or whatever.
I have a question for the collective, or more likely, Justin.
Does anyone one know specifically what the arrangement is between the WEC and the UFC as it relates to talent? Does the UFC have the ability to “call up” a fighter from the WEC? I know Zuffa owns both promotions, but are they run separately, or is their any sort of “talent exchange” ongoing? For example, could the UFC send a promising WW or LW down to the WEC for seasoning before bringing them back to “the show”?
Is the relationship between the WEC and the UFC more like organized baseball, wherein you have an ascending and descending talent exchange, or is it more corporate, like WalMart owning Sams Club and running them as separate entities?
Also, both being under the Zuffa umbrella, with the UFC having the obviously far superior position within the company, does the UFC have to honor WEC contracts?
For example, Donald Cerrone has one fight left on a WEC contract. Suppose Dana White needed him to fill in on short notice for a PPV LW bout? Does the parent company Zuffa simply invalidate the WEC contract and replace it with a UFC contract on Dana’s say so?
More importantly, would the WEC have any sort of recourse if the UFC did “talent raid” to round out a PPV?
Just curious…
I’m going to try to answer some if these as concisely as possible, but I don’t really know the answer to a lot of it. Rather than trying to answer point by point, I’m going to tell you what I do know about the relationship, and that will hopefully answer a lot of the questions directly, and imply the answers to others.
For the most part they are run as two separate entities, Dana is the president of the UFC, not Zuffa. Reed Harris is the president of the WEC. At this point the only common weight class is lightweights, and there has been no precedent for a fighter to get “sent down” to the WEC fromthe UFC or “called up” in the opposite direction. The WEC focuses on the lighter weight classes and has a stated goal of becoming the premier organization for the lighter weight fighters. The only instances of fighters moving from one promotion to the other are lightweights going down to featherweight (Jens and Manny), and the top fighters in a weight class coming over when that class was dissolved in the WEC (Sonnen, Condit, Cantwell, Stann). As far as I know, the terms of their contracts remained the same, but I have no documentation to support that. That’s pretty much all I know on the subject.
If the organizations are managed separately then the contracts would be separate and legally binding. That being said Zuffa does own both so say they wanted a WEC fighter for a fight in the UFC, they could easily buy out the remainder of any particular contract and re-negotiate a fighter into a new contract under either organization. Signing a contract does mean there is obligations to fulfill and usually penalties outlined in the contract for failure to uphold or options to buy it out.
I would guess contact law is no different between these organizations despite the fact both orgs are owned by a parent company.
Now what that means is say the UFC wanted a fighter and had a contract to buy out in WEC in light of knowing they are going to be getting a new contract immediately, or that contract even being part of the the initial move to change a fighters organization I am sure a fighter going from WEC to UFC would take a relatively small buy out of the WEC contract, knowing they are immediately or simultaniously signing a UFC contract which is likely to be more lucrative.
For example unless explicitly outlined in the WEC contract the UFC could say.. offer a fighter a dollar per fight remaining on their WEC contract and a 3 fight UFC deal worth more per fight then the WEC contract. I have no idea if this is possible in the UFC/WEC contract world but is totally plausible in regular contract law.
I train with Ben at the Lab in Glendale AZ, Henderson can take down Cerrone at will, Benson has had recent eye surgery so he can now see, he was fighting near blind and was still a dangerous fighter. Now that he’s able to see, the cowboy is in some serious hurt. Henderson has one of the deadliest sub’s in MMA.
Prediction: Henderson by choke first round… no doubt.
cerron won for sure even frank mir had cerrone ahead he clearly won 1,4,and 5 thats 3 to 2 for cerrone incompetant judges. the cowboy was robbed!