Tennis Cup I

This article is about a site sanctioned Poop Tennis tournament.

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The Tennis Cup I was a Youtube Poop Tennis Competition hosted primarily by Gallers and was the first one to be officially billed as a Tournament. It ran from May to August 2008 and was the largest tournament to happen at the time, with 32 participants and nearly all of them having considerably at the time some kind of large following either within the community or beyond. It's eventual winner would be PlasmaFetus's brother Ishkibibl, who was notably influential in the development of an editing technique known as "frame scrambling", as well as within the developing YTPMV scene of the day.

Development

With the signup thread initiated some months after the Tennis League II ground to a halt, Gallers proposed the idea of a "straight knockout competition" that he figured would be easier to organize than the ones before it, and before any rules were in place asked about potential interest. RabbitSnore was the first to do so, famously quoting "RabbitSnore = Tennis. Tennis = Tennis Cup. RabbitSnore = Tennis Cup. Not only am I interested, but if this logic is correct, I AM the Tennis Cup", and proceeding to suggest that because this would be the first competition to deal with elimination, that the round count be increased to 6, as opposed to 4 like Gallers originally imagined. The gameweeks would also for the first time be extended to two weeks as opposed to one to compensate for the time added on by the potential construction of two additional rounds. This meant that the tournament would be much longer than what had occurred previously. Eventually RabbitSnore formulated and Gallers put up the definitive rules for the Cup, which went as follows:

RULES (because it's about time i posted them)

Rounds per match: 6

Length per round: 0:30 - 3:00

Turnover period: 36 hours

Source videos introduced per round: Minimum 0 (except for serve (1)), maximum 3

State sources either on YouTube or in the match's thread

Should a participant be unable to complete a round within the turnover time, without stating a good reason and without their opponent's consent, they shall be deducted 2 votes. If they're taking ridiculously long then they shall be eliminated with their opponent advancing to the next round

Whosever name appears first in the draw will serve for the match

Matches begin on Sundays and end two weeks later on Saturday. Voting also closes on Saturday night.

It wouldn't be until later that a seperate week was allowed in order to collect votes, in order to avoid confusion/distraction of the ongoing tennis from those who would potentially vote. The Tourney section of the forum would also be created and used for the first time, as well as the first conceptual host account, which for this tournament would work under the name of John Madden("YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD","Just like Orson Welles, John Madden has uses Post Mortem"). Vote counts however would not be displayed at this time yet.

25 of the 32 total participants would play in a tournament for the first time, making this tournament contain the largest concentration of new blood that has ever occurred. This would also be the only tournament in tennis history to see the participation of the entire active Tennis Cafe Staff all at one time. Following Rabbit then came Gamebop and TheHappyFungus, along with MAZZ0Murder, Milkr0und, Billion, Luioigi, RAKninja, GameCubeHero, Nuthead("SEAKING FUCK YEAH", "YOU IN?" "FUCK YEAH", "FUCK YEAH"), Intenseowl, uncle69er, NS2, Crash2991, RealGenericFilms, TheDarkRises, Ishkibibl("I'M IN MOTHERFUCKERT"), Captpan6, Domorato, strong414bad, GreatBritishTurd, ophios, Terrorist, and Trogdor7190. By this point the match signups had been originally closed, displaying 24 players, and the excitment level for the tournament was essentially sky high. Several people involved gave the tournament nicknames such as "YTP Tennis All Stars" due to the fact that just about everyone who signed up was regarded as an "awesome" player or YTPer overall. This only served to escalate as SeductiveBaz suddenly announced his desire to play in the tournament, to which RabbitSnore insisted at the usurping of Gallers that he be allowed to enter, to which people immediately wanted the player number extended to 32 players ("CAN WE PLEASE WAIT UNTIL THERE'S 32 OR SOMETHING", "IDK ARE THERE 32 AWESOME PEOPLE?", "HELL YEAH", "GATHER THEM EN MASSE", "NAH TOO LAZY"). Following this, TheRoboticRobot also signed up, along with MrDrunkenFox (FOX HAS JOINED TENNIS), Cristoph, Fiddesticks411, FourTwoNineStudios, Temeku and Markie. strong414bad would then drop out originally due to outside commitments and be replaced by sonicnerd23, and with that the 32 participants that were to start were in place. This tournament would also mark the first time that randomly generated set lineups would be introduced, quickly becoming a standard practice.

Matches

Set 1

A very large amount of videos from this tournament currently remain lost: All of ishkibibl's videos (with NS2, MTB710, Gamebop, Cristoph, and Terrorist), All of Nuthead's videos (with NS2, RabbitSnore and Markie), All of Cristoph's videos (with TheHappyFungus and Ishkibibl), All of intenseowl's videos (with MilkR0und and MTB710), Domorato's Rounds 2, 4, and 6 with MTB710, Trogdor7190's Rounds 2, 4, and 6 with Billion, Sonicnerd23's Round 1, 3, and 5 with RabbitSnore, Milkr0und's Round 2 with intenseowl, Terrorist's Round 1, 3, and 5 with Ishkibibl, FourTwoNineStudios's Round 1, 3, and 5 with Crash2991, and Gallers's Round 2 with RAKninja. Because of this, matches from the first Set such as Ishkibibl vs. Terrorist and MilkR0und vs. Intenseowl are missing entirely, and the only information taken from these two matches is that Ishkibibl defeated Terrorist and that Milkr0und ended up becoming disqualified after two rounds, giving Intenseowl an automatic win("WHY AM I ALWAYS FUCKING WITHH INTENSE - AND SINCE MY GAME WITH INTENSE NEVER FINISHED, CAN WE JUST PICK UP FROM WHERE WE LEFT OFF"). Gamebop vs. strong414bad(a rematch, also in which strong would end up replacing MrDrunkenFox and thus being in the tournament after all if only for a round) and RAKninja vs. Gallers would both fail after three rounds on account that both latter players had already lost steam and motivation, with the same happening to uncle69er vs. SeductiveBaz for the volleying player after only the serve. Gamebop, RAK and uncle would all subsequently advance.

Of the remaining complete matches however in the first Set, there sits the match of ophios vs. Luioigi, which would serve to be a profound inspiration on the style that Luioigi would come to develop over the years, at this time having something radically different. Ophios would begin the match using a trademark sophistication in his source choice with a 1950s The Pied Piper of Hamlin film, which Luioigi would counter by adding in Duck Hunt and Scooby Doo, brought together by otherwise simple editing equal to that of the serve. Ophios would further add in Sweeny Todd, along with several other videos and be a noticeable move foward editing wise, echoes by Luioigi who would bring forth more of the PIP techniques as displayed by Ophios previously, making Round 4 increasingly heavier at parts with effects. Round 5, originally uploaded accidentally out of sync, would at most feature still rather simple editing, largely made up of quick buzzing, but be regarded as a solid response. Luioigi's Round 6 would feature a very large number of added source which took up the majority of the video, with all of it being edited in his early take on a heavy effect style from the day. Ophios would eventually emerge as the matches winner however with the first voting results.

NS2 vs. GameCubeHero would be a rather humorous match in that very round delivered by GameCubeHero would all have the same title, "ANARCHY". The serve would be made up of both Higurashi and Metal Gear Solid I edited in NS2's quickfooted WMM-powered style, with particular repetition given to Snake's "WHAT THE HELL" in response to a number of scenes of the video. Round 2 would feature a lot of added sources involving Resident Evil and much of the round would become lost in a swirl effect with distorted audio, which in Round 3, which added in Tekken, NS2 was easily able to make use of most if not all of the round he was presented with. Round 4 started off with then very unusual hard-panning tricks with the audio before once again taking up the majority of the video with Resident Evil sources, making particular repetition of "A MIDWESTERN TOWN IN AMERICA", which would provide excellent material for NS2's Round 5. In this round he humorly isolated "MIDWEST" and "AMERICA" repeated throughout various parts of the video, while making once again excellent use of the previous round and the addition of more Higurashi and Tekken into the fold. He would close off the round with a scene from MGS4: Guns of the Patriots ("War has changed. When the battlefield is under total control," spoken in Japenese) and a silly expression from one of the Tekken characters. Round 6, while not adding any visual sources, was made up almost entirely of two still frames from the added Tekken source in round 5 while in the audio a mashup of Navi's voice commands from Ocarina of Time could be heard in three layers of rapid and hypnotic succession (being 1:54 in length, roughly 1:25 of the video was HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY WATCH OUT WATCH OUT WATCH OUT WATCH OUT WATCH OUT WATCH OUT HELLO). Ultamitely the win would go to NS2.

TheDarkRises vs. TheRoboticRobot(the volleying player being the brother of quax) had every round title of the match being of some mention of a previously banned Youchew user known as TheDumbening, who had garnered a significantly bad reputation from his famous alt account creations and overall malicious personality(he presently is unbanned however, and is seen to have to improved very positively). Persistant throughout was a sense of high energy and frequently loud distorted audio, more of the trademark to TheDarkRises than to TheRoboticRobot, and the serve displayed this well in its use of almost all live action footage. TheRoboticRobot would counter this in Round 2 by putting a large amount of the serve into a musically oriented pattern, while adding in a Flintstones cigarette commercial. Round 3 would at the most be surface editing, but still preserving the constituent energy, while Round 4 would be probably RoboticRobot's strongest response, using layering tricks in very creative ways that overall countered TDR's style exceedingly well. Round 5 would at most be Hotel Mario overlayed onto the previous Round, and for more than half the video would be only that source, ending on Luigi's "YOU" for a comedic effect. Round 6 would overlay onto that the ending of Super Mario bros. 2, but would use more of the previous round throughout, and making reference to several of the running jokes/fads of the day. The end in particular was noted for creativity in that the sequence with a sleeping Mario's dream bubble had the edited previous round chroma-keyed inside of it. TheRoboticRobot would end up winning this match.

A common running joke with the match of MAZZ0Murder vs. Fiddlesticks411 was the fact that for the first half of the match every round was rendered with an unusually small aspect ratio, which would poke fun at it by proceeding to make them smaller. By MAZZ0's Round 3 the video had shrunken to about 1/35 of the size of the full screen. In Round 4 it was almost 1/50th, and by startling yet humorous contrast Fiddle would finally add-in a full size source with AosTH, creating interesting Juxtaposition. MAZZ0Murder would then in Round 5 make clever uses of the shrunken frames by dupicatiing them across the now properly full-screen of his round, which prompted Fiddle to do the same with Round 6 although using WMM, experienced difficulty, and as a result the round was only minimally edited with a lot of source added on top of it. MAZZ would emerge from this match as victor.

In Captpan6 vs. GreatBritishTurd the match began with a serve that used all live sources edited with a large amount of wave effects, a very different way of editing than Captpan would become known for in future years. Round 2, which bellowed "YOU ARE NOT PREPARED" toward his opponant, tore into the serve much like GBT was known to do, surrounded by footage from The Burning Crusade and an unnerving video called The Duck Donald. The audio and effects displayed here were unusual to most as it had been done in Final Cut Pro, of which GBT was only 1 of 2 people that used that editor at the time of this tournament. One creative bit of this video was a particular section involving footage from a 1966 short called Camberwick Green, where the round is masked over various parts of the scenery including much of the windmill itself. The short musical segments involving The Burning Crusade where also done by GBT recording his own drums.

Round 3, which added Final Fantasy and the F-Zero anime to balance out the source addition, seemed to struggle to volley in places (as with merely speeding up and swirling the windmill segment) but also seemed to excell in volleying in places(the beginning with the frame transition movement tricks, as well as the musical follow up to GBT's musical segments), making it seem middle of the road but an overall great response. It's most particular feature is probably the deforming of video frames to spell out "Captpan6" towards the end. Round 4 amped up the technical progression of the match, using once again a variety of unusual audio effects/filters, using an incredibly ludicrous bit of footage from a film called Inquisitor as well as footage from an actual tennis game, which he used to mask segments from the previous round into the drawn rectangles of the court. The Round ended with an incredible series of frame replication effects and an audio editing peice over a still frame a la CorruptionSound, who at this time was only just starting to make videos. Captpan6, who was now enthusiastic since he had hoped GBT would give him a round like that, responded in Round 5 with one of his most technically complex videos to date, intercut with an Earth, Wind and Fire music video and Dragonball Z, ending on a rather humorous cutoff with "DARN!" from a SchoolHouse Rock cartoon, followed by 8 seconds of silence. Round 6 ended the match on an almost all musical note, adding in several film scenes involving massive explosions and a YTPMV that used a video titled "RabbitSnore tells us his story", which made frequent references to the YouChew forums, all powered once again by GBT's own recorded drums. The previous round would only be used for the first 16 seconds of the video however, so from a critical tennis perspective it was overall a lacking response, but this would not stop GreatBritishTurd from emerging as the winner of the match.

Domorato vs. MTB710, due to the latter player's explosive popularity, would become likely to be the most watched match of the tournament, as well as the match that has retrospectively had the most urging for Domorato's Rounds to return in order to watch the match in it's entirety. Round 4 i.e. ROBOTNIK IS A TERRORIST remains it's most watched Round, particularly due to it's ending with a distorted Mario's "SMMMMMMMMMOOOOOOOOOKKKKKEEEEE" followed by Luigi's "GOTTA HEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII" and it's use of Mr. Clean, then a trademark of MTB710 and later one used by CorruptionSound. The matches of Sonicnerd23 vs. RabbitSnore, FourTwoNineStudios vs. Crash2991, Markie vs. Nuthead, Billion vs. Trogdor7190 and TheHappyFungus vs. Cristoph all also remain only half intact, with the progression of each unknown as of this writing. The players from these matches that would move on though would be made up of mostly the players who's rounds still exist: MTB710, Billion, RabbitSnore and Crash2991 with the exceptions of Nuthead and Cristoph.

ophios vs. Luioigi

NS2 vs. GameCubeHero

TheDarkRises vs. TheRoboticRobot

MAZZ0Murder vs. Fiddlesticks411

Gamebop vs. strong414bad

Captpan6 vs. GreatBritishTurd

Set 2

MTB710 vs. Intenseowl, which started while Intenseowl's match with MilkR0und was still underway, never made it past the serve due to shenanigans that both he and Milk were undertaking and overall extensiveness in the time taken to respond, meaning that MTB710 automatically advanced onto Set 3. Cristoph vs. Ishkibibl remains entirely missing and the only information found on it is that Ishkibibl defeated Cristoph and advanced, while in Nuthead vs. RabbitSnore, which remains only half intact, Nuthead (representing the unintact half) became the victor and would advance. uncle69er vs. Crash2991 has since become incomplete due to Crash making his videos private, but it is known that he emerged as the match's winner.

Gamebop vs. GreatBritishTurd would however serve to provide a then rapidly evolving sense of intensity in editing, displaying the early technical abilities of both players at their highest. Stemming from the serve that contained for the time very advanced editing of footage of Popples and a game called Titus the Fox came a match that by Round 2 was already a clustered array of visual mayhem, back by the new addition of a strange and silly source called "Onyxia Wipe Animation" and yet another usage of his trademark "Top Ten Movie Explosions of All-Time" source. It also featured rather unique usage/editing of classic TV color bars in its transitioning sequence from the main edited previous round (only about 24 seconds once again) to the added footage which took up the rest of the video.

Round 3 would see Gamebop coming up with a clever twist, and within it he would add self-recorded footage of Mario Kart 64 and manipulate the Onyxia source to mimick "50 CC" and "DK" as the coinciding race option and character were chosen in game, then using the "OK?" with Mario saying it in game. The "FUCK!" would also be used during an instance of DK being hit by a green shell to great effect, humourously coined by MycroProcessor retrospectively as "one of the only not child-friendly things that Gamebop ever did in a video". The round would close with a frame moving sequence that would be something Gamebop would come to do frequently in later videos.

Round 4 would feature some incredible editing and Final Cut sensibilities that wouldn't be seen done in a video again for years, as well as a particular audio effect during a sequence where "50CC-DK" is turned into "DKC" and a Donkey Kong Country speedrun is added into a flurry of liquefied video. The prominent added source throughout this video is Meet the Sniper, which has the "FUCK!" superimposed into the scope during the sequence when several TF2 characters are being head-shot, and at the final scene the editing is made to look like a supercharged explosion in which several clips of the previous round are sucked into the barrel of the rifle at a growing intensity until the final blast of noise. People by this point were calling both Gamebop and GreatBritishTurd two of the greatest YTPers ever, with this match almost impossible to single a winner out of.

Round 5 was a continuous cluster of up to 5 different instances of the previous round appearing and being edited at the same time on screen with many appearances being made by the addition of the Dinobabies source and the Darkwolf Kaizo Mario play-through, which made for a fantastic conclusion on Gamebop's side. GBT's last round (upon uploading of which he announced "BRACE FOR IMPACT!") took a radically different yet creative approach to the editing of the previous round by building it around the WarHammer 40,000 Dawn of War Intro, featuring the humorous gag of having Gamebop's avatar imposed over a character in the footage who struggles to post a banner bearing a Tennis Championship Trophy in it's colors while enduring brutal firepower from the arsenal of another character with GBT's avatar imposed upon it. This would be the factor that would cause some spectators such as Captpan6 to cast his vote over to him for the sheer creativity of his delivery. Overall many people were notoriously split on who the winner of the match was, but in the final results it would be that the win went to Gamebop.

ophios vs. RAKninja is very widely regarded as one of the more definite influential matches in tennis history, as out of this match came an unexpected great chemistry between the two players and new editing perspectives that were to greatly influence future generations of tennisers in the years to come. RAKninja had very much been looking forward to playing to ophios, even predicting beforhand that he may possibly have the chance to play him in the next set, which ended up becoming true.

Sweeny Todd would be reintroduced by ophios in his serve, which featured as a signature the opening passage of Tubular Bells playing throughout the video's length to slow moving visuals, which already put a mood into place for the next few videos. Gamebop called the serve "Beautiful", and RAK made the mention that since seeing conradslater's entry for the "Perfect Poop" contest happening at that time that he had very much been waiting to do something with a video in it's particular pace and tone. ophios would later comment in disappointment at how the video was "1000% better off of youtube" due to him adding several layers of chorus effects that were apparently lost in the uploading of the video, and post a link to the raw video file for those that were interested.

Round 2 featured as a response to Tubular Bells an "audio portal rendition of the halloween theme" as the background music of the video, which edited the serve in a much more hypnotic way than the serve itself. Clashing with the somber music and stretched audio was the overlaying of a video called "youtube poop: scratch plunges for a while" and the growing intensity and volume of a loud noise used from the serve, treated with excessive distortion and reverb that serve to see the round out to its comparatively climactic end. Round 3 followed this up with excessive chorus and reverbing treated to nearly every clip used in the video and edited the round in various ways that gave the resulting video an unusual and unsettling atmosphere. Added into much of the video were videos titled "soulja boy's rant" and "elmo getting shot". Ophios would also comment following posting this round that his serve was "getting idiots" in reference to his recieved comments. Gamebop called Round 3 "incredible", showing anticipation for what was to come.

RAKninja in his Round 4 uncharacteristically added in an episode of Ren and Stimpy although he called it in this sense the "Eddie and Tommy" show, and another bit of footage called " the american Ring's cursed video sequence" to further the generally unsettling nature of the match up to this point, utilizing some interesting color effects on top of the existing sources. NS2 commented that the match was "something I definitely have not seen before" while RAK made mention that he already had a plan for Round 6, hoping in anticipation that "that wily ophios dosent throw a wrench in my plans". Round 5 was very sparsely edited but in terms of atmosphere it was responded to with great effectiveness, making signifigant use of blank space and reversed reverberation, with no added source besides spoken dialogue of Rita Dove reading poems in 1987 and "End Game 2". Ophios claimed that this was due to running out of steam during this match, which RAK commented that he "kind of had that effect on people," stating that TheHappyFungus once complained similarly at the end of their match. Round 6 broke the atmospheric continuity signifigantly by the addition of a lot of Transformers G1 footage into the final round and editing things somewhat more faster paced than before, which brought end to a match that made NS2 respond with simply, "I must think" In regards to voting. RAK took this as accomplishing his mission in the match, for it truely was a tough decision on both sides. Ultamitely, despite Ophios's sentiments of his last round and definitive appearance surrounding it making him seem the weaker player by the end, he ended up emerging as the match's winner and progressed onward. The thread also became the first place that Emperor Ing would ever post within the tennis section, stating that he had never played a single game but would like to try.

Set 3

Ishkibibl vs. Gamebop remains incomplete both in that Ishkibibl's Rounds are gone and that the match itself only ever got to Round 3, making it the only match that Gamebop has ever forfeited due to running out of ideas and succumbing to stress. His Round 2 however is notable for being the first video of his to use the Hungarian cartoon Kukori Es Kotkoda, which would later become his signature source, featuring in many of the videos that were to come afterward. The 13 seconds that he had finished of Round 4 were eventually uploaded in late 2009 as he considered them still interesting enough. Nuthead vs. NS2 remains only half complete since Nuthead's rounds are gone but it is known that NS2 was the winner of this match. Since MTB710'S match with Intenseowl never took place, he took the opportunity to reuse his serve to start his next match in Temeku/MTB710 vs. Crash2991, which he seemed to have dissatisfaction with in relations to his confidence in his serving abilities. This match has since become incomplete due to Crash2991 making his videos private, but it is known that Temeku emerged as its winner.

Ophios vs. TheRoboticRobot began with a simple serve using only the Hey Arnold cartoon, and RAKninja would comment about halfway through the match that he was glad that this serve was not used on him due to his bias against editing cartoon sources. Round 2 would add in Doug and Angry Beavers and use elements of a slow and hypnotic style while also featuring many advanced edits including lots of layering over clips of Grandpa Phil's "mnenh". Round 3 would layer more on top of this while adding footage of a live production of Sweeny Todd but would be drastically shorter, ending rather suddenly. Round 4 would feature more advanced editing and also add in Alf, a small clip from the film A Time to Kill and "some gif with a caveman" and feature even more layered editing upon the Hey Arnold and Angry Beavers footage, a lot of which would end up getting stripped away, almost certainly all of the Hey Arnold footage in Ophios's Round 5, which was an altogether slow and ambient round, adding in The Princess Bride and "Something called Dr. quantum or something like that". This is notable in it's title of just "5", the earliest of a series of videos titled 5 that would be made by both Gamebop and MycroProcessor some years afterward.

TheRoboticRobot claimed that the round was a tough one to volley back and that this wasn't helped due to a vacation that he also took in the middle of it, which delayed his round 6 for some time. He accepted that he likely wouldn't make it past the match but accepted his placing with honor in that it was wonderful to have made it within the top 8 players. Naturally Ophios did end up being the victor of this match and moving onward.

Set 4

Cristoph expressed satisfaction upon noticing that a WMM user had made it to the semifinals when he noticed the matchup of NS2 vs. Ophios had begun, with the serve implementing both MGS4 and Tekken 4, two signature sources of NS2 alluded to in the video's title "Snake had a Restaurant"(the Tekken 4 footage was from a cutscene within an assumably italian restaraunt). Ophios's Round 2 was titled "Snake had a touch", alluding to the addition of the Silly Symphony short "The Golden Touch" as a new source(at one point an annotation saying "SUP NIGGA" appears in a scene in which a small elf appears and then disappears in reverse). Round 3 was titled "Snake had a Link" to allude to the addition of footage from Twilight Princess, while also adding in new MGS4 footage at the end of the video, ending on a rather humorously grunted "NO" from Solid Snake which would be the first thing edited in Ophios's Round 4, slowing it down tremendously. This was titled "Snake link to a shock site" and added in footage from the Chrono Trigger DS countdown site as well as "some wierd guy" as Ophios described him. Round 5 was quite brief and did little more than add 2Xtreme footage but otherwise provided a good response, and Round 6 added in a short bill Nye clip and the famous "I AM THE CHEESE" scene from Rocko's Modern Life, completing the match in a mere 5 days. NS2 appeared to have lukewarm feelings about the match as when RealGenericFilms suggested that it could be the "match of the sencherry", NS2 responded with a simple "not really". He would end up being voted into the finals following this though. Ishkibibl vs. Temeku/MTB710 remains only half complete although it is known that Ishkibibl came out victorious, and would therefore become NS2's final opponant.