Addressing the Cageside Seats Pro Wrestling Tournament Controversy

There's been some controversy around Cageside Seats (CSS) recently and I would like to just go ahead and get everything out in the open right here in this post.

The CSS Pro Wrestling Tournament has been, to say the least, a booming success. Concocted simply as a fun way to create discussion and find out who the community believes is the greatest pro wrestler of all time (within those listed, of course), it has driven traffic to the site and served to help facilitate some awesome conversation between everyone here and beyond.

As the tournament left the first round and entered the second, there was a ton of hype for the Hulk Hogan vs. Owen Hart match-up. And it got a lot of votes, almost 1,000. The problem is that a lot of those votes came in extremely late in the day and into the night, just before the poll closed. The same happened with last night's match-up between Chris Jericho and Kurt Angle, except on a much larger scale. That match ended up having a recorded 1,719 votes.

With the Hogan-Hart match, there were rumblings of suspected potential for foul play. And, as admitted by at least one, multiple votes were cast by the same person via methods discovered such as clearing cookies and various other means. That upset a few people who have been voting once and nothing more, including myself. But after asking about internal metrics and looking at site traffic during that time, everything appeared to be on the up and up for the most part.

However, last night saw the Jericho-Angle match shoot up from 1,000 or so votes to the 1,719 it closed with within one hours time. Again, many suspected what they called "foul play."

Here's the reality of the situation.

Is it possible there are folks out there who voting more than once? Yes. However, it's also just as possible there isn't and only one vote was cast by everyone who voted. The truth of the matter is I have no way of definitively telling you either way.

There are ways to vote multiple times, as stated previously. Clearing your cookies on Cageside will do the trick. Signing out of your username and voting before signing in and voting again would also work. There are myriad other ways and one need only run a quick Google search to find out. It seems like doing so would be time consuming and, frankly, lame as all hell, but I suppose there are a few out there who may be willing to waste their time doing so.

It should be noted that we never dictated the terms of the vote. I mean that to say, we never said you could only vote once and that's that. The National Football League, for instance, allows fans to vote as many times as they want on who will be chosen for the Pro Bowl. I believe Major League Baseball does the same for its All Star teams. It's a common practice in many polls and we never specified either way, mostly because, again, we have no way of restricting voting with the current set up we have.

The reason we have the set up we do is because it's simple. Easy. Aesthetically pleasing.

In closing, if you feel that someone voting multiple times for who they want to win "taints" the results, there's nothing I can do to change that. It's just how it is. But as I've said, I have no way of knowing if that's happening for 100-percent certainty. Maybe it is, maybe it's not.

What I do know is the tournament has been and will continue to be a great deal of fun. Is there someone out there trying to game the system and sway the results? Maybe. Maybe not. But either way, they can't take away the smile I get from reading the discussion that arises in the comments section on each poll. And it's because of that that this tournament will continue until the very end where we'll crown a champion and have a lot of awesome conversations along the way.

I hope you continue to join me for that ride.

Thanks, Cagesiders.