In a no-coronavirus world, we’d be starting the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Saturday.
Instead, the 2019-20 college hoops season will be without a champion thanks to the cancellation of the tournament – and pretty much all other sports – due to the ongoing global pandemic.
Here at The Blue Corner, we’re always big fans of filling out our brackets every March in the hopes we’ll finally win the office pool. But with no tournament, that fell by the wayside, too.
But hey, if you’re a bracketologist at heart, never fear. The UFC is trying to give us a little tournament flavor, anyway. The promotion, through UFC Fight Pass, has set up a 16-fight bracket for the best comebacks in MMA history. If you’re a Fight Pass subscriber, you can head there and watch all the fights. Then you can vote for each round in polls at the UFC Fight Pass official Twitter feed.
The initial round of 16 featured nine UFC bouts, three from PRIDE, two from Strikeforce, one from Invicta FC and one from Cage Warriors.
The first round wrapped up Friday – and there was just one upset. The rest was all chalk. No. 11 seed Darren Elkins’ win over Mirsad Bektic topped No. 6 seed Scodtt Smith’s win over Pete Sell.
But everything else went to form, including No. 1 seed Anderson Silva’s fifth-round submission of Chael Sonnen at UFC 148, No. 2 seed Cheick Kongo’s win over Pat Barry, No. 3 seed Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira’s PRIDE win over Bob Sapp, and No. 4 seed Matt Hughes’ rematch win over Frank Trigg.
Check out the current bracket with the quarterfinals set above. Then check in with the UFC Fight Pass Twitter account for the latest polls in the round of eight Saturday, the final four on Sunday, and the final Monday. The pools will be out each day starting at 11:30 a.m. ET.
The Blue Corner is MMA Junkie’s blog space. We don’t take it overly serious, and neither should you. If you come complaining to us that something you read here is not hard-hitting news, expect to have the previous sentence repeated in ALL CAPS.