Edmonton Might be it for WEC Canada This Year

World Extreme Cagefighting’s debut visit to Edmonton this Sunday at the Rexall Place might be the only time Canadian fans get this year to watch the promotion’s lighter-weight circuit in person.

Following the UFC’s initial turn in Vancouver on Saturday, WEC General Manager Reed Harris said he wasn’t sure if the sister promotion, which is also owned by Zuffa LLC, will cross the northern border again in 2010.

“We are looking at other cities in Canada, but there’s so many places the WEC needs to go in order to spread its brand and I’d love to come back up to Canada, but I don’t know if it will happen this year or not,” said Harris on a Monday teleconference call touting WEC 49 “Varner vs. Shalorus.”

“We had planned on going international into both Canada and Mexico, and had been working on that deal for about a year and a half,” said Harris. “Prior to Faber-Aldo (WEC 48), Lorenzo Fertitta -- who kind of drives the international aspect of Zuffa and the UFC -- sent us to book in Canada, so that’s why we planned this event. It was part of our expansion in the WEC brand.”

However, that brand has gone through a bit of an identity crisis of late. The central Californian promotion was scooped up by Zuffa in late 2006 and initially groomed as a standalone entity to plug into a broadcast deal with the Versus cable network. Three years later, the WEC, which caters to the 135-, 145-, and 155-pound weight divisions, is still struggling to get out of the hugely popular UFC’s shadow.

For the WEC’s first pay-per-view event, Zuffa chose not to fight the success of its flagship product. All traces of the WEC name were stripped from the April 24 airings, right down to the gloves the fighters wore. On top of that, Zuffa further blurred the line between its two properties by excusing the WEC’s usual broadcast team and replacing it with its UFC lineup -- that team was careful never to mention “WEC” once during the telecast.

Tom Wright, the newly hired head of the UFC’s Canadian office that opened in Toronto two weeks ago, again reiterated on Monday that the promotion hopes to host three UFC pay-per-view events in Canada each year and will begin to roll out “Fight Night” events across the six provinces where the sport is welcome in the coming months.

Although asked, Wright gave no specifics for the WEC’s future plans up North, further fortifying longtime talk that the younger promotion will be folded into its big-brother organization sooner than later.