by John McCarthy, The Fight Network

This is a good question that I am not sure I can truly answer with any certainty. Just about every promotion besides the UFC will likely have no problem having WAMMA as a sanctioning body for the sport or their individual promotions at this point in time. Promotions like Affliction, EliteXC, Strikeforce, and Adrenaline all have stated they support WAMMA and want to use them to bring about one true champion in the sport. They say this because it will help them if they can have a fighter in their promotion that is recognized as the truly best fighter in the world at whatever given weight class.

Read more at...

For more MMA news and features, check out thefightnetwork.com.

Right now, Affliction has Fedor Emelianenko fighting on its promotion and he is the WAMMA heavyweight champion of the world after his 36-second destruction of Tim Sylvia. Everybody that knows this sport and is being honest would say that Fedor is the best heavyweight in the world at this point. The UFC's heavyweight champion is Randy Couture, who is attempting to keep from fighting in the UFC until his contract expires because he says the only fight that makes sense for him at this point in his career is Fedor. I personally agree with him based upon his age and the legacy he has created over his career, so you can't count him.

Their interim heavyweight champion is Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, and Fedor already holds two dominating wins against him. So right now, if you want to see the best heavyweight fighter in the world fight, you go to Affliction and not to the UFC.

That is why all of the promoters except the UFC want it because it adds legitimacy to their promotions and it shows people who are not hardcore fans of the sport that there are other promotions putting on high-caliber fights with great fighters.

The UFC is not going to support WAMMA anytime soon. The UFC wants to be the start and the end for fans interested in MMA. They are already "The Brand" when it comes to mixed martial arts. The UFC has done a fantastic job of getting its brand out there the same as Xerox did with copiers or Kleenex did with tissues.

The UFC has a majority of the sport's top fighters under contract. There are, off course, great fighters not fighting for the UFC at this time, but if you look at any number of the top-10 rankings out there, fighters under contract with the UFC will dominate most of the positions. There are guys like Gilbert Melendez and Josh Thompson in Strikeforce, Jake Shields and Robbie Lawler from Elite XC. All of these fighters are top-level guys who could fight with and beat most any fighter on a given day.

BJ Penn is the top-ranked fighter in the lightweight division and should be. But for there to be a title match for the WAMMA belt between BJ Penn and a fighter like Gilbert Melendez, the UFC would have to stop the system it has clung to for so long. They would have to allow a fighter who is not under an exclusive contract to fight in the UFC or allow one of their champions to fight in someone else's promotion.

That is simply not going to happen.

First, if a titleholder from the UFC fights either in the UFC or in another promotion and loses to a fighter not under contract to the UFC, then the UFC just devalued itself and its championship belt. They will not have control of the person who is now considered the top fighter in the world and their belt will be viewed by many people as just another promotional belt instead of the belt that signifies the best fighter in the world at that weight class. People will realize that maybe not all of the greatest fighters in the world fight for the UFC, but that there are other promotions out there that have very good fighters who can fight as good or better than the more popular fighters under contract to Zuffa.

None of this helps the UFC so you can see why they will not be jumping on the WAMMA bandwagon. I can't blame Zuffa at all for looking at this the way it does. They have worked very hard to get where they are. They have their matchmaker in Joe Silva who sets up the matches that Dana White, the president of the UFC, wants to promote. They are a very successful self-contained promotion that has no outside influences telling them what to do. Why would they want to let someone in that can now influence their promotion in anyway?

This is the problem that confronts Dave Szade and Michael Lynch, the chief executive officer and chief operating officer, respectively, of WAMMA. They have a pretty good idea, and I want to see the best fighters in the world fighting each other no matter what promotion they are signed to. Politics and money have a huge influence over all of the combative sports and since that is not going to change, it is going to take a "hell freezing over" moment or a shift in the political power of the sport before you see the UFC and WAMMA working together.