Since day one of the WEC purchase and subsequent Versus TV deal, its been clear that the focus of the promotion has been centered around the one fighter that Zuffa felt was both marketable and dominant. Urijah Faber was well known due to his success on the west coast in promotions such as Gladiator Challenge and King of the Cage, and up till tonight, it seemed that the faith of Zuffa in him was more than justified. Faber regularly came up in P4P discussions and was at least partially responsible for the biggest rating ever pulled by the organization.

Another man brought in from the onset was an undefeated middleweight considered by some the true linear middleweight champion of the world. Paulo Filho’s outstanding physical strength and submission game had earned him a perfect record and wins over a number of name middleweight contenders. It had always been assumed that Filho’s entrance in the WEC was due to a friendship he had with UFC middleweight kingpin Anderson Silva and a subsequent refusal to fight him. Would he ever be willing to take on the challenge, he and the middleweight division would almost certainly be integrated with the UFC’s, and Filho might be the only survival of such a culling.

Coming into tonight, the combined 37-1 records of the two men were among the most impressive in the sport and largely representative of a future in which fighters are carefully handled and brought success. Now that the cameras are off, nothing is so sure anymore.

Urijah Faber seemed to wound the unheralded Mike Brown with a well thrown knee to the ribcage, but appearances after the fight don’t necessarily prove who won inside the ropes/cage. Faber’s standup was reminiscent of a Bernard Hopkins or Roy Jones styled defensive wizard, but even with his success landing single shots, he never was able to get far enough into the fight to start implementing combination punching. Mike Brown will always be remembered for the massive counter right that dropped and ultimately led to the stoppage of Faber, but he had landed cleanly prior, taking advantage of the defensive liabilities presented to him by Faber through nothing other than merely sticking to orthodox straight punching. 

For Faber, its a monsterous step back in his career. The veil of invincibility and the dream matchups with names like Kid Yamamoto seem a million years ago already. He must now deal with Mike Brown if he ever wants to return to the mountain top. For Brown, the narrative is very different. Brown’s current win streak began before his single fight with Bodog, but it was his surprising lightweight division win over the once top contender Yves Edwards in that show’s second series that began his resurgence from fringe contender to potentially being the #1 featherweight MMA fighter on the planet. One has to wonder if the WEC might be interested in contracting the top Japanese featherweights; Imanari and Mishma clearly leading that class, both having fought outside Japan on several occasions. However, the risk of losing the belt to a non-english speaker instead of an immediate rematch will probably not be considered acceptable for Zuffa’s secondary promotion.

Filho’s fall from grace was nowhere near as sudden, but it was every bit as hard. Total-MMA’s rankings held Filho as the top fighter in the weight class a scant 2 years ago, and now with losing only a single bout, he’s likely fallen straight out of the top 10. Chael Sonnen deserves respect for finishing the job he seemed to be on his way to complete in the first bout before foolishly being caught in a submission, but yet, Sonnen is clearly not an elite talent. Its hard to even imagine him being a factor in the weak 185 lb division of the UFC where enormous question marks often hang over the heads of both its brightest young stars (Maia, Bisping) and its veterans (Henderson, Kampmann).

And if Sonnen isn’t likely to be competitive, where does that leave Filho? If he ends up in the UFC, one must expect him to turn out looking like a Wes Combs, albiet with an extensive international background to back up what will appear to be a deeply inflated record. That record and his background could make him a solid choice for some of the younger talents in the UFC to be built up against, but his skillset, even as depleted as it may be, is still dangerous. More bothersome than merely his failings in the cage are his failures outside of it. He’s recently been treated for drug abuse and came in well overweight. At his height and with his lack of any appreciable talent to make up for it, its hard to imagine how he could contend in the stacked light heavyweight division. Sizewise, it would often be similar to the deficits met by Jeff Monson in the heavyweight division, but without the weak talent pool to feast on. Filho’s future looks bleak.

Finally, among those who’s horizons darkened appreciably after tonight, Jens Pulver suffered his 4th loss in 5 fights since resigning with Zuffa. He’s been stopped in three of those losses to boot. While Jens had a set of talents that clearly could be relied to bring him success just 6-7 years ago when the talent levels at the smaller ends of the MMA spectrum were far less stacked with talent, times have changed. With that change, Jens finds himself obsolete among waves of younger, stronger, more athletic fighters who’ve been blessed with ever increasingly modern techniques versus the infantile MMA world Pulver first entered a decade ago. We’ve come from fights on grainy video tape with absurd rule sets to live high definition telecasts; its a paradigm shift in the way the sport is promoted. With that change, the world that so many had prospered in just no longer exists. While others can only blame their own mental lapses, Pulver’s failures are that of time and progress.