World Extreme Cagefighting hit a home run in the group's live national cable television debut Sunday night. I don't have detailed notes on this one, since I watched at home, and occasionally flipped over to check on the Red Sox-Yankees game, but here are a few day-after observations:

*Zuffa did a solid job differentiating the WEC from the UFC. The show had its own distinct vibe. The Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas actually came off looking better than it has for Ultimate Fight Nights, somehow. It is a small venue, but it came off looking like the place to be last night. WEC also did a solid job of introducing fighters casual fans might not have known going in. There were a couple technical glitches that will presumably be corrected the second time out, but all in all, the event had a first-class feel.

*Frank Mir has the potential to become an excellent color commentator. Mir displayed technical knowledge like few ever put in the position. But more important, he had a way of expressing that technical expertise in a manner that was easy to understand for the average channel-surfing fan who doesn't know the difference between an Americana and a Kimura. Even better, Mir seem to anticipate what was going to transpire right before it happened, giving the finishes an extra rush of excitement. Mir still needs to polish off a few rough edges in his presentation, but all the tools are there for the former UFC heavyweight champ to become a tremendous announcer.

*The 25 x 25 fighting surface really does speed up the pace. All but one of the televised matches were settled in the first round, and the only one to go longer, Alex Karalexis vs. Josh Smith, was 15 minutes of action.

*Karalexis is a prime example of why fighters can benefit from competing in the WEC instead of the UFC. The conventional wisdom is that the WEC is where to go if you fight at 145 pounds and under, and that's for a good reason, since the little guys don't get to compete on many big stages.

But consider someone like Karalexis, who fought 170 in the UFC and now competes at 155. Karalexis is a solid athlete, but he was looking at a future of fighting on UFNs or dark matches on pay-per-views. Instead, fighting in the WEC, Karalexis looked like a warrior going 15 minutes with one eye swollen shut and winning his match. That sort of national television exposure will mean a lot to guys like Karalexis, Brian Stann, and Brock Larson, as the average fan tuning in will remember their performances.

*Urijah Faber again proved he's the real deal. The clips of his win over Chance Farrar should be mandatory viewing for every mainstream sports reporter who thinks that nothing of note is going on when an MMA fight hits the ground. Farrar earned respect for his fearlessness, as he hung with one of the two best under-155s on the planet, but the California Kid was just too much.

There isn't much left to say about the K-1 Dynamite! show at the LA Coliseum last night that I didn't address in last night's column. What really makes last night's mess mind-boggling is that K-1's kickboxing brand is the world leader in that sport, so they clearly know how to run a successful fighting operation.

*As for attendance last night, K-1 claimed 54,000, which I guess you could say is true if they include everyone who lives in a 10-mile radius around the stadium. It's this simple: The Coliseum has a 92,000-seat capacity. 20,000 seats were taped off to begin with. There are three levels of raised seating. The lower level was filled from 40-yard line to 40-yard line on each side of the stadium, then tapered off. The middle level was filled right around the 50 on each side, then tapered off immediately and was empty the rest of the way. The upper level was empty all the way around the stadium. OK, not true, I looked up once and saw two people sitting way up at the top row. But you get my point. Add in the people on the field level and I stick with 10,000-15,000 as an estimate.

*So, if you want to make an MMA debut, you do it the way Brock Lesnar did. Lesnar is a tremendous natural athlete. He won the NCAA heavyweight wrestling title at Minnesota. As a pro wrestler, while obviously it is not a sport, it still requires athleticism, and he displayed freakish agility for someone his size. When Lesnar tried out for the Vikings, he made it all the way to the end of camp before being cut, and word was he nearly made the practice squad. Before you scoff, consider that he had not stepped on a football field since high school. How many people with zero experience can come in and nearly make an NFL practice squad?

The important thing here is that Lesnar has gone about preparing for his MMA career the right way. He has been training for nearly a year. He first trained with the Miletich camp last summer. He didn't stay with Miletich because of the distance between the camp and his home. But people associated with the gym I've spoken to raved about how he kept taking a licking and coming back for more, and was always looking to work on his weaknesses and learn.

Since then, he has been training at the up-and-coming Minnesota Martial Arts Academy, home camp of UFC lightweight champ Sean Sherk, and worked on his boxing with the highly respected Greg Nelson.

Lesnar is serious about making it. His next career choice will be a major factor in whether he does so. Lesnar needs to brought along and built properly. Someone could pay him huge money to face Fedor right now, for example, but Fedor would eat his lunch. Lesnar needs to be slowly tested against a better level of competition with each match. Will he hook up with a promoter who is willing to be patient with him, or will he sign for big, quick bucks and take a match that could impede his progress?

*By the way, there was a show this weekend that demonstrated the someone other than UFC can promote successfully in North America when it is done right. Ever notice how many quality fighters are either from Quebec, or get their first exposure there? That's because there has long been a good promotion in place, TKO, which runs out of Montreal. Georges St. Pierre, David Loiseau, Patrick Cote, Sam Stout, Mark Hominick and others came up through TKO. Promoter Stephane Patry doesn't try to rent 92,000-seat stadiums and put on pay-per-views. Patry has slowly grown his business through smart match-making, and TKO is now at the point they run the Bell Centre in Montreal for quarterly shows. TKO's latest show was on Friday night. In the main event, Cote downed Alberta's Jason Day (11-5) to win the TKO middleweight title via stoppage at 4:05 of the first round in front of a crowd of 7,700.

*The big weekend isn't done yet. Tonight is the WEC's debut on Versus, featuring Urijah Faber's featherweight title defense against Chance Farrar. It is past due time for the 145s and 135s to get their shot at the limelight.

Tonight's main MMA attraction is the big K-1/EliteXC combined show at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Weigh-ins were held yesterday at the Wilshire Grand Hotel. The actual weigh-ins were delayed from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. due to paperwork issues, which no doubt left fighters who were cutting weight for several days thrilled. Anyway, the results:

Brock Lesnar (262) vs. Kim Min-soo (255)
Royce Gracie (188) vs. Kazushi Sakuraba (187)
Johnnie Morton (213) vs. Bernard Ackah (207)
Mighty Mo (292) vs. Ruben Villareal (270)
Tim Persey (265) vs. Jonathan Weizorek (265)
Jake Shields (170) vs. Ido Pariente (168)
Melvin Manhoef (192) vs. Yoon Doon Sik (190)
Hideo Tokoro (153) vs. Brad Pickett (155)
J.Z. Calvan (158) vs. Nam Phan (155)
Isiah Hall (156) vs. Katsuhiko Nagata (156)

Notes on the show: Both Gracie-Sakuraba and Manhoef-Sik are catchweight matchups, with Gracie and Sakuraba agreeing to a weight limit of 190 and Mahoef-Sik at 195. Calvan missed weight for his lightweight showdown with Phan and will be docked 20 percent of his pay as a result. Morton, the former USC and Detroit Lions wide receiver, is making his MMA debut. His opponent, Ackah, is an Ivory Coast native and a popular television personality in Japan. Ackah is 1-0 in MMA. This fight will be three, three minute rounds instead of the usual five-minute rounds, due to the lack of experience for both fighters. Lesnar, likewise, is making his MMA debut. This isn't a lark. Lesnar, a former NCAA heavyweight wrestling champion at Minnesota is serious about making it and has been training for nearly a year. Dana White has openly said he's interested in having Lesnar. Lesnar was originally scheduled to face Korea's Hong Choi-Man, but Choi-Man was denied medical clearance by the state of California, due to what the Wrestling Observer reported as a tumor in his pituitary gland. Min-Soo is 2-5 in his career and is a former Olympic judo silver medalist. Both of his wins are by submission, but he simply hasn't mastered the standup game. The first part of this show will be broadcast live on Showtime at 9 p.m. Eastern/6 Pacific; the pay-per-view portion starts at 10 p.m. Eastern/9 Pacific. ... Gracie-Sakuraba is the key draw for hardcore fans. It is a rematch of one of the most legendary matches in MMA history, their 90-minute clash at a PRIDE show in 2000, won by Sakuraba. Sakuraba is known as "the Gracie Hunter," not just for this win, but for snapping Renzo Gracie's arm and scoring wins over Royler and Ryan Gracie. This fight won't go 90 minutes, though, as it is three, five-minute rounds. ... Eight countries are represented on tonight's fight card: The United States, United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, the Netherlands, Isreal, and the Ivory Coast. ... Main K-1 promoter Sadaharu Tanigawa declared at Friday's press conference that all 100,000 tickets have been sold for the event. He may as well also have declared world peace and that he will take a trip to Mars next week. It is no secret that the LA market has been flooded with free tickets to the event. I've heard from a half-dozen friends of mine who don't follow MMA, including a Spanish teacher who doesn't follow sports, who have told me they've gotten free tickets to the show. How many of these people with freebies show up will determine how good the turnout looks on television.