At 21 years old, Henry Cejudo became the youngest American to win a gold medal in Olympic wrestling, when he swept through the 55kg freestyle field at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. When he returned home, Cejudo began to immerse himself in boxing training, winning tournaments in Arizona and training with Freddie Roach. Before long, Bellator approached him with an offer to join their Season Three bantamweight tournament. “I was close enough to signing with Bellator that they faxed the papers over and I was ready to sign them,” Cejudo said. “I thought about it for a day and during that time I got a call from USA wrestling about me coming back. I had a decision to make, and I think I just see myself with another gold medal and maybe doing MMA afterward.”

Cejudo now plans to compete at the 2012 Games in London. His comeback began yesterday evening at the “USA vs. Russia”-themed Beat the Streets 2011 Gala in New York City’s Times Square, where he competed in wrestling for the first time since Beijing. Cejudo faced Junior World bronze medalist Rasul Mashezov and won 2-0, 4-3. The American team beat the Russians 5-2 overall, aided by wins from 2010 U.S. Open champion Jordan Burroughs and 2009 World bronze medalist Tervel Dlagnev.

(Mamoru Yamaguchi and Shinichi Kojima: America is not ready.)

With their middleweight and light-heavyweight divisions officially closed down, the WEC is planning to add a new division to further differentiate themselves from their big brothers in the UFC. No, not women (at least not yet). According to MMA Weekly, you’ll soon be seeing 125-pound flyweights battling under the WEC banner: 

Quick, name three flyweight fighters. If you can do it, you’re probably a die-hard Shooto fan, since that’s where most of the top 125-pounders compete. And you can be sure that the WEC will be poaching a lot of talent from the Japanese organization. But Bloody Elbow believes that the WEC will be building their new division around Henry Cejudo, the 21-year-old American freestyle wrestler who won a gold medal in Beijing last summer competing at 121 pounds. Cejudo has been training at a boxing gym in his hometown of Phoenix, and was briefly rumored as an opponent for Norifumi "Kid" Yamamoto at Fields Dynamite!! 2008. The upside with Cejudo is that he’s already something of a national hero, and can actually speak English — and therefore would be a lot easier to market than some of the other flyweight talent the WEC might bring aboard.

No matchups for the WEC’s March event have been officially announced, though a welterweight title fight between Carlos Condit and Brock Larson has been rumored.