FanHouse DominickCruz

Wednesday night's WEC 44 event is a featherweight showcase, headlined by Mike Brown defending his 145-pound title against Jose Aldo.

But the WEC's bantamweight division, which won't be represented in any of Wednesday night's live fights on Versus, might be even more stacked than the featherweight division. My list of the Top 10 bantamweights in MMA is topped by six WEC fighters, with champion Brian Bowles and former champion Miguel Torres clearly the class of the division.

A couple of Shooto fighters make my list, as does Dream's Bibiano Fernandes (whom I consider a bantamweight even though he's the promotion's featherweight champ), but there's no question that at the top, the division is dominated by the WEC.

At first glance, not much seems to have changed in the MMA bantamweight division in the last three months. All the top bantamweights in the WEC -- Brian Bowles, Miguel Torres, Dominick Cruz, Takeya Mizugaki, Rani Yahya and Joseph Benavidez -- fought on August 9, and since then they've just been biding their time for their next fight.

But I have a new name in my new ranking of the Top 10 bantamweights in mixed martial arts: Bibiano Fernandes. Yes, I know the title Fernandes just won is the Dream featherweight belt, not the bantamweight belt. But Fernandes weighed in at 138 pounds in the Dream tournament, and if he were ever to fight in the WEC, I think he'd be a bantamweight.

And so Fernandes is listed as a bantamweight in my new rankings, which are below.

For the first time in a very, very long time, Miguel Torres is not the best bantamweight in mixed martial arts. No, Brian Bowles, who dominated Torres in a first-round knockout Sunday night at WEC 42, is now the best of the bantamweights.

But while some might think it hurts the WEC to have a popular and famous champion go down, I think Bowles beating Torres has reinvigorated the bantamweight division. Bowles vs. Dominick Cruz, a rematch between Torres and Takeya Mizugaki and fights involving Rani Yahya, Manny Tapia, Akitoshi Tamura and Joseph Benavidez (who should move down to flyweight as soon as the WEC adds 125-pounders) are all on the horizon. That makes the bantamweight division more exciting than ever. The list of the top 10 bantamweights is below.

On this week's edition of The MMA Hour, MDS, Mike Chiappetta and I discuss the aftermath of Affliction canceling "Trilogy" and joining forces with the UFC. Where does Fedor Emelianenko go from here? How does this affect Strikeforce? What will be Afflction Entertainment's legacy? Those questions and more were answered.

Plus, we were joined by WEC bantamweight contender, Joseph Benavidez, to talk about his upcoming fight against Dominick Cruz on August 9. The winner of that bout looks to be the No.1 contender in the WEC's 135-pound division. Check out the show below.

It's not often that a fighter moves up in our MMA rankings after losing a fight, but then again it's not often that a fighter looks as impressive in a losing effort as Takeya Mizugaki looked in dropping a unanimous decision to Miguel Torres at WEC 40. So as we update our list of the Top 10 bantamweights in MMA, we've moved Mizugaki up -- ahead of everyone but Torres.

The non-televised undercard of Sunday night's World Extreme Cagefighting show is drawing to a close, and those of us here at the UIC Pavilion have seen a lot of talented bantamweights and featherweights.

We're a few hours away from the 40th event in the history of World Extreme Cagefighting, and as I was looking at the fight card today, I got to thinking: Is this the best collection of bantamweights ever assembled at one MMA event?