A Nickel A Day Can Save Your Favorite Fighters

Yesterday DirecTV dropped the cable channel Versus from its lineup, part of a continuing feud over whether or not the satellite provider will pay 26 cents per subscriber instead of the current 21 cents. I can feel your eyes glazing over. After all, what the hell is Versus and who in their right minds watches it?

The answer is: you. Or it should be.

For MMA fans with DirecTV, today is a national day of mourning. Thanks to a squabble over a nickel, okay to be fair 14 million nickels a month, the world of MMA just got a little smaller. Today, the WEC is out of our lives.

If you haven’t seen it (and judging by their meagre ratings, that is true of pretty much everyone) World Extreme Cage Fighting is just like the UFC. Only instead of fighters you know like Tito Ortiz or Brock Lesnar, it has tiny and delicate men pounding the crap out of each other. The main claim to fame for the WEC is its bantamweights and featherweights, men smaller than the average Midwestern woman. These pipsqueak warriors are often dwarfed by the referee telling them to touch gloves and come out fighting. This is especially funny when the ref is a gargantuan man like “Big” John McCarthy.

Of course, all this is soon forgotten when the bell rings to start the match. Every one of these little guys is a whirling dervish. The fights are invariably action packed and WEC stars have started infiltrating the MMA mainstream. Unfortunately, except when superstar Urijah Faber fights, the shows have had average ratings at best. This isn’t helping. The brouhaha has left the September show in shambles, now moved to October 10th in a hope that DirecTV and Versus will settle their differences by then. Right now, that seems unlikely. So, say a prayer for the little men everywhere. Little guys need to fight too.