After a long and extensive process, esteemed colleague Brent Brookhouse and I are proud to bring you the 2011 Bloody Elbow Tournament of Bad, an idea from the local Chicago sports radio show, Boers and Bernstein. The concept is simple: compile a list of 64 of the worst things related to the sport of MMA and pit them against one another in an NCAA Tournament-style bracket. You, the readers, vote on each match up until we have our ultimate champion.
Your 2011 Tournament of Bad Champion
MMA Judging
Well, there you have it. We started this journey a month ago. We battled through some questionable seeding. We frowned at some uninspired voting. We laughed during the good times; we laughed during the bad times. And now we're left with the ultimate bad for 2011: MMA Judging.
MMA Judging was a strong favorite heading into the tournament. It went undefeated during the regular season, stomped through the conference tournament, and had everyone perplexed as tournament czars placed it into the bracket as an 8 seed.
Despite the low seed, or perhaps fueled by the disrespect, MMA Judging went on a tear that may never be seen in tournament play again. It opened with a thrashing of play-in entrant Lactic Acidosis, the 90-10 differential the largest in the entire tournament. Number one seed Mike Goldberg, human sound board, fell by a 3-1 margin in one of the most impressive performances of the month.
MMA Judging's next two opponents, Fight of the Night bonuses to bad brawls and Leonard Garcia scorecards, both failed to reach 20% of the vote.
And in the finals, against another strong contender reeking and oozing and pulsating with bad, Cecil Peoples, in every form, MMA Judging breezed through a 60-40 decision.