What if the UFC did tournaments again?

The piecemeal, boxing-style matchmaking used to design the majority of MMA cards is understandably criticized often for undermining the legitimacy of the sport. Accusations of protecting popular fighters, feeding them "cans" and "squash matches" are not uncommon, even in the most competitive promotion in the sport, the UFC.

You can see this in other sports, such as NCAA football where the Bowl Championship Series is perennially and vehemently criticized as showing favoritism. Calls for an NFL-style playoff system are frequent, even from the halls of the United States Congress.

Nor are tournaments foreign to combat sports. K-1 has two yearly tournament series. NCAA wrestling championships are decided by tournament. The Grand Prix has been a staple of Japanese MMA since the beginning, and Bellator is bringing the practice back into vogue in the U.S., providing some really excellent match-ups on a regular basis.

Of course, the UFC was a tournament series in the early days, and still uses a tournament for The Ultimate Fighter reality show. What kind of fights would we see if the UFC scratched all of its plans and adopted a seeded-tournament format? I got bored at work and made a big stupid spreadsheet to work out all the brackets. If you're curious what a UFC tournament bracket would look like, check under the jump.

Seeding is important for any good tournament. Having two favorites fight in the first round can kill the drama, while having two underdogs fight in the first round might give them an easier path to the title than they deserve. To determine seeding, I used the rankings from Fightmatrix, which I believe to be a very reasonable and rigorous ranking system. Even though seeding is used, some shuffling is done to keep teammates separate as long as possible (to avoid situations like Horn vs. Hughes at ADCC) and to avoid rematches of very recent and decisive fights (for instance Leben is moved to avoid a first round against Simpson).

All divisions are given a 33-man bracket, with #32 and #33 having a play-in fight with the winner taking on #1 in the first actual round, much like the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament. The exception is Heavyweight, which just isn't deep enough to justify anything bigger than a 17-man bracket. The Lightweight bracket actually excludes several decent fighters such as Danzig and Winner, but there aren't nearly enough to justify a jump to 65.

So without further ado, here are my brackets for a totally imaginary UFC tournament series, circa September 2010:

Some great fights stand out: Velasquez vs. Duffee could be phenomenal, Nog vs. Kongo could be a crowd-pleaser, and Mir vs. Nelson looks very competitive too. I'd also expect spectacular KO's from Carwin and Dos Santos in their first round match-ups. The possibility of Nog vs. Lesnar sounds great, too, and will probably never happen with today's matchmaking. Note: Nog and Cro Cop were swapped despite their seeds to avoid Nog/Dos Santos (teammates).

Light Heavyweight is even more interesting. Right off the bat, Vera vs. Cane  and Silva vs. Soszynski look like exciting first round match-ups. I feel bad for Liddell having to face hot prospect Phil Davis only to be rematched against Shogun. But there are several old timers in this bracket who, while they deserve to be there, are little more than speedbumps for the up and comers. I included Franklin in this bracket, since he seems sincere about staying in the division. There's also the prospect of a Forrest vs. Rampage rematch, which makes sense given the razor-thin decision of their first bout. It also sets up Bader vs. Nogueira, which is so good Joe Silva already thought of it!

The Middleweight seedings took some wrangling but I think ultimately this looks like a very interesting tournament. Palhares and Belcher were swapped to avoid Belcher/Herman II, Rivera and Miller were swapped to avoid Miller/Sonnen II, and Sakara and Leben were swapped to avoid Leben/Simpson II. Franklin was also included even though I put him in the LHW tourney too. I think if he had the choice he'd drop back down to make another run through this tourney. Finally, McGee and Noke were swapped because TUF fights aren't counted by Fightmatrix, so this makes a little more sense.

Just like Joe Silva wants, we get Bisping/Cote and the possibility of Wanderlei/Akiyama. Miller vs. Munoz would be very competitive, and everyone I know would love to see Maia choke out Dollaway. My final four would be Anderson, Okami, Maia and Leben.

Diaz and Lytle are swapped to avoid Diaz/Shields. Pyle and Story are swapped to avoid Hathaway/Story II. MacDonald and Hallman are swapped to set up Hughes/Hallman III, the way god intended. The seedings natrually separate Swick, Fitch and Koscheck, no matter how much Dana White hates it.

Frankly, I'd pay good money to watch every single fight on this bracket. It's that good. Diaz vs. Kim? Lytle vs. Sanchez? Condit vs. Swick? Thiago vs. Rumble? All excellent. and that's just in the first round. There's a remote possibility for GSP/Serra III, but I doubt it.

The division is too stacked for me to come up with a final four off hand.

Rafaello Oliveira and Tavares are swapped to avoid Oliveira/Penn (training partners), but otherwise the seedings are un-tampered. And boy are they wonderful.

Can you think of better style match-ups than Stout vs. Siver, Stephens vs. Guillard, Stevenson vs. Boceck, Griffin vs. Pearson or Pellegrino vs. Lauzon? Even Escudero vs. Edgar is a solid match despite being the widest seeds in the bracket. Fantastic.

Fisher/Guida could be ugly though.

That about wraps this up. I spent way too long working on this pointless nonsense, so if you took the time to read it, thanks. If you skimmed it, well, thanks also. I hope I demonstrated just how exciting a tournament series could be in a league as competitive as the UFC. There are a lot of unheralded quality fighters in every division who could really make a splash if they were given the chance.