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.
It's time for things to stop being polite, and start getting mildly serious while keeping up the irreverent aesthetic of the whole thing. We're down from our original bracket of 64 to the 16 worst things related to MMA. You can check out the full bracket here.
We start the Sweet Sixteen voting on the left side of the bracket, featuring the Jon Hess and Art Jimmerson Regions:
Jon Hess Region
(8) MMA Judging vs. (12) Fight of the Night bonuses to bad brawls
(2) Gus Johnson's makeup vs. (3) "Explosive and athletic" black fighter stereotype
Art Jimmerson Region
(1) Chael Sonnen's credibility vs. (5) Thanking God during postfight interview
(6) Leonard Garcia scorecards vs. (10) UFC scrubbing history
Photos courtesy of UFC.com, Google Image Search, Esther Lin for Fanhouse, and my own private stash of MMA events.
Voting after the jump. Polls open until midnight ET tomorrow.
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