Jorgensen’s goal: be WEC’s final champion, UFC’s first
In his 10th World Extreme Cagefighting bout, Scott Jorgensen finally gets his shot to fight for the bantamweight title.
A win over champion Dominick Cruz on Thursday in Glendale, Ariz., actually would give Jorgensen two belts.
The WEC will be staging its final event, with the bantamweight and featherweight divisions being added to the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Featherweight champion Jose Aldo already was installed as the UFC featherweight champion. The winner of this bout will go down as the last WEC bantamweight champion and the first UFC bantamweight titleholder.
Jorgensen, who has won five straight fights after starting 2-2 in WEC, has been critical of the champion’s unorthodox style.
“He’ll land one (shot) and then move and then land a couple and move and then throw a kick. I think it’s a very defensive style and to me it’s not very effective,” Jorgensen said during a teleconference interview. “He’s a champ. He finds a way to win. (The strikes) are scoring points, but they don’t hurt. They don’t sit people down.”
Cruz rarely stops moving as he bounces around, landing strikes and making it difficult to find him in the cage. He has lost just once in 17 career fights, but has only one stoppage victory among his six WEC wins.
“I won a lot of fights this way, so I know what I’m doing. I know what I do right, I know what I do well and I know I’m very good at it. That gives me my confidence to continue to fight the way that I fight,” Cruz said, disputing that he doesn’t try for knockouts. “I’m in there trying to finish every single fight, I’m in there trying to kill the guy from beginning to end. I think everybody that I’ve gone in there with I’ve rocked or hurt at some point in the fight, without a doubt.”
WEC 53, which will air on Versus (Cable 38) at 6 p.m., also will feature a lightweight title bout between Anthony Pettis and champion Ben Henderson.
The fighters from the WEC lightweight division will be moved over into the existing UFC lightweight division. The winner of the WEC title bout will immediately become the No. 1 contender to the UFC lightweight belt.
■ TORONTO ON TAP — The UFC officially announced it will stage an event at Rogers Centre in Toronto, a venue and market the organization has long coveted. The holdup had been in getting mixed martial arts sanctioned in Ontario, a hurdle that was cleared in August.
No bouts have been announced for UFC 131 on April 30, but welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre expressed his desire to appear at the event after retaining the belt with a unanimous decision victory over Josh Koscheck in Montreal on Saturday night.
■ KOSCHECK INJURED — Josh Koscheck suffered more than just a loss during the five-round beating he took at the hands of St. Pierre.
Koscheck sustained a broken orbital around his right eye and was transported to Boston to have it repaired. He revealed the injury Sunday via Twitter.
The surgery is expected to take place once the swelling goes down.
■ JAPANESE STARS SIGNED — UFC president Dana White announced two signings via Twitter while he was in Canada for UFC 124.
Norifumi “Kid” Yamamoto and Michihiro Omigawa, two of the most prominent featherweights in Japan, will be added to the UFC, as it brings in lighter weight classes for the first time.
Yamamoto was one of the biggest stars in the sport, but has lost two of his last three fights after returning from a lengthy layoff due to knee surgery. He will drop to bantamweight in the UFC.
Contact reporter Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com or 702-224-5509.