Over the next few days, Bloody Elbow is going to ask for your opinion on some of the best things that have happened in the MMA world over the first half of 2012. There will be a total of eight different categories you'll be asked to vote on. For simplicity's sake we're going to stick with high-level and relevant MMA stuff in these posts. While I'm sure there was a ludicrous knockout in an unscheduled MMA event at The Lumberyard strip club in Des Moines, or an insane pancreas lock submission on an obscure ZST! card in Japan, let's just stick to stuff a lot of us have seen, okay? (If that spiel looked familiar, it's because I just lifted it from last year's awards post.)

It's pretty simple. I'll post five or ten options in a category, you vote for what you think was the best. If you think I left something really important off my list, post it in the comments and we can add it to the poll if it's deemed worthy. I can almost guarantee you won't like all my suggestions, but narrowing down these lists is tough.

Now that we've got that out of the way, let's get onto the second poll - the best post-fight celebration of the first half of 2012.

You can still vote on best submisson here as well.

Here we go, in no particular order:

Stephen Thompson at UFC 143 - After knocking out Dan Stittgen with an amazing kick he did a crazy spinning backflip, reminiscent of a corkscrewy pro wrestling move.

Maximo Blanco and Marcus Brimage at UFC 145 - Following a dull fight where they didn't much of anything, the two men engaged in a ridiculous tumbling competition that was a lot more entertaining than the fight itself.

Jose Aldo at UFC 142 - After he knocked out Chad Mendes, Aldo raced into the Rio crowd and celebrated with them. He was eventually corralled by security, but tried to take off on them to do the same thing once again.

Junior dos Santos at UFC 146 - This probably shouldn't count as a post-fight celebration, but I'm including it anyway because the fight was clearly over at that point and I thought it was awesome. Frank Mir was down and out on the floor but the referee wasn't stepping in for some reason. Mir started to stir a bit, so JDS nailed him with a brutal hammerfist to the face as an exclamation point on the bout.

Shawn Jordan at UFC on FX 1 - After knocking out Oli Thompson, the 245-pound heavyweight pulled off a pretty damn impressive standing backflip.

Okay homies, go vote!