You've seen the (backwards) signs for over a month now, and they've all led up to this point: The beginning of the fourth MKO Idol competition! I'm sure there's always somebody who doesn't know exactly what's going on, so here's a brief explanation:

This (much like the actual "American Idol" competition) is a (popularity) contest where YOUR votes decides who'll become the latest Mortal Kombat Online Idol (past winners include my bois Hyuga, Ghaleon, and IcedOutLinKueiWarrior)! The way it works is that there will be 100 participants (how did I determine who these 100 are? Those who signed up, those who are frequent/current contributors to popular threads like the "Rate the Above" or "Post Something About the Person Above" threads, and the rest are my personal picks) that will be divided in 10 groups of 10. Each of these groups (for the first few rounds, at least) will have 5 matchups. Everybody (except the 2 involved in said matchup and myself, 'natch) can vote for the person they'd like to see move on in the competition.

If you still don't understand, let's say that in Group A, the first matchup features 2 of my "faves", VenoMark versus The_Cold_Kombatant. Everybdoy except those 2 and myself votes for one of 'em and whoever has the most votes goes on to the next round. This goes on until one person remains and becomes an Idol here just like the 3 mentioned above. Obviously you can only vote once in each matchup and each voting period lasts roughly 48 hours (give or take a few hours if I or one of the other judges -any past winner, runner up, and Shingo- can't end the voting period).

Like I mentioned in the sign up thread, the key difference in this edition is that it's basically everybody against everybody. Before, I would pit girls against girls only (at least in the first round) and mods against mods. This time, anybody can face anybody, and you'll see exactly what I mean (heh, the very first group's "Featured Matchup" -a matchup between 2 people that I personally consider to be very respected/well-liked/popular here or an interesting matchup for a certain reason- is quite a doozy).

So, without further ado, here are the 5 matchups for Round 1's Group A:

-Shyriu versus Dark_NoOB
-CCShadow versus The_Purple_Bunny
-secondgen versus Kabal20
-DeathScepter versus Murdoink

FEATURED BOUT
-Tgrant versus Sub-Zeromasta

Told ya it was a doozy

Let the voting...BEGIN!