And then there were half. Earlier this month, WWE announced the long awaited return of the King Of The Ring tournament. The tournament, which has been held intermittently since the end of the annual competition in 2002, offers an instant upgrade for anyone who wins it, making the tournament a rather important accomplishment on almost any resume. And now, we’re done with the first round.

After this week’s SmackDown Live, the first round of the King Of The Ring tournament has come to an end, leaving the field at eight instead of the sixteen that started. The quarterfinals will take place on next week’s Monday Night Raw and SmackDown Live, the semifinals the week after that and the finals at Clash Of Champions. Here are the updated brackets:

Monday Night Raw

Samoa Joe
Ricochet

Cedric Alexander
Baron Corbin

SmackDown Live

Elias
Ali

Chad Gable
Andrade

There was some good action on Tuesday. Check out the two first round matches from SmackDown Live:

Opinion: The field has thinned out quite a bit now and that makes for a better looking tournament. With so many people included earlier on, it was a bit more difficult to figure out where things were going to go. Now though, we have a group of potential winners along with some names who just aren’t going to get past their next match. It should make for an interesting tournament going forward and that’s a nice feeling.

Who do you think wins the tournament? Who is your dark horse pick? Let us know in the comments below.

Thomas Hall has been a wrestling fan for over thirty years and has seen over 50,000 wrestling matches. He has also been a wrestling reviewer since 2009 with over 5,000 full shows covered. You can find his work at kbwrestlingreviews.com, or check out his Amazon author page with 30 wrestling books. His latest book is KB’s Complete 2004 Monday Night Raw Reviews.

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