Mixed martial arts is a sport that is dominated by the United States.
The world’s premiere MMA organization is based stateside, many of the sport’s brightest stars hail from the U.S. and the country’s sports development infrastructure continues to churn out highly regarded prospects.
Clearly, if you went country by country, matching up the best fighters each nation has against one another, the U.S. would demonstrate this dominance.
But what if fighters from the U.S. were matched up against a team comprised of fighters from every other country in the world? Would that dominance hold, or would the collective efforts from around the globe be too much to handle?
With major players like Brazil, Japan, Canada and the U.K. joining forces along with the remainder of the world, it looks like a pretty daunting task.
As it happens, we at Bleacher Report have conducted an exercise to see just how such a tournament would play out.
Selecting the top 5 U.S. and non-U.S. fighters from each men’s division from flyweight to heavyweight, we’ve created a match-play tournament between Team United States and Team World.
Read on for notes, criteria and information about the voting panel.