The final card event in World Extreme Cagefighting history is starting to shape.
WEC officials today announced that Shane Roller meets Jamie Varner and Donald Cerrone faces Chris Horodecki at WEC 53, which takes place Dec. 16 at the Jobing.com Arena in Glendale, Ariz., and features title fights in both the lightweight and bantamweight divisions.
Both contests were previously reported by MMAjunkie.com.
The Phoenix-based Varner (16-4-1 MMA, 4-2-1 WEC) looks to snap out of a career-worst 0-2-1 skid. It began earlier this year with a submission loss to Ben Henderson, which forced Varner to relinquish his title, and it continued with a split draw with Kamal Shalorus at WEC 49 and a unanimous-decision defeat to rival Cerrone at WEC 51 in September.
Prior to the setbacks, the two-time UFC fighter posted a five-fight win streak, which included a TKO win over Rob McCullough to win the belt and successful title defenses over Marcus Hicks and Cerrone.
Roller (8-3 MMA, 5-2 WEC), a three-time Division I All-American wrestler at Oklahoma State University, debuted with the WEC in 2008 and found himself within arm's reach of a title shot after posting a 5-1 record. The wins came over notables such as Anthony Njokuani, Hicks and Danny Castillo. But hoping to earn a title shot and avenge the only loss of his WEC career (to now-champ Henderson), Roller suffered a submission loss to Anthony Pettis at WEC 50 in August.
Pettis is now slotted to fight Henderson in WEC 53's main event
Cerrone (12-3 MMA, 5-3 WEC) recently rematched former champ and bitter rival Varner and won a unanimous decision. Nearly two years prior, he suffered a technical split-decision defeat to the then-champ after an illegal blow left Varner unable to continue in the fight.
After the redemption, Cerrone and Varner both talked about being about to a rubber match. Instead, Cerrone, who also fell short in a title fight with Benson Henderson back in April, goes for his third win in four fights when he meets Horodecki (16-2 MMA, 2-1 WEC) .
The former IFL star made his promotional debut in December 2009 and suffered a vicious head-kick TKO loss to Anthony Njokuani at WEC 45. Since then, though, the young Canadian has earned a submission win over Danny Downes and a split-decision victory over Ed Ratcliff. He's 4-1 since a December 2007 IFL loss to Ryan Schultz, which was the first of his career.
Source: http://mmajunkie.com/news/21249/roller- ... cember.mma