(Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

Nothing lasts forever — even cold November rain, and the seemingly untouchable bantamweight championship run of Miguel Torres. No, Torres did not ruin Brian Bowles’s boyish face at last night’s WEC 42, as many (everybody?) assumed he would. Instead, Bowles nearly knocked the former champ’s mullet off during a violent belt-taking that was reminiscent of Brown vs. Faber 1.

Torres was in trouble from the beginning of the match, as Bowles sent him to the canvas with a heavy right hand. After Bowles dropped some elbows from the top, Torres was able to kick Bowles off of him. Moments later, Torres launched forward with a barrage of punches that had Bowles on his heels, but Bowles fired off a sharp right hook that dropped Torres again, and started throwing down bombs until Torres was in dreamland. Brian Bowles — who picked up a $10,000 Knockout of the Night bonus for his shocking of the world — is the new WEC bantamweight champ. “No excuses,” Torres said after the fight. “Brian is going to be a good champion, but he’ll see that the responsibilities that go along with being the champion are not easy.”

(Just a couple of poor boys fighting over scraps of food and tens of thousands of dollars.)

This week I debated MMA writer/Army officer Kelly Crigger on a number of MMA-related topics (what’s that, sounds suspiciously like our Ben vs. Ben feature? Yeah, tell it to Crigger, *cough*ripoff*cough), but the one where we seemed to differ the most revolved around whether the WEC can now make a successful transition to pay-per-view.  Kelly argues yes, pointing to the excitement provided by the last WEC event and the need to improve fighter pay in Zuffa’s little guy organization.  He’s right, of course.  They have been putting on good shows lately and Mike Brown does deserve a raise, but it doesn’t mean I’m personally prepared to give it to him.