Why Tounament Arcs are Boring

 Imagine a story that is only a tournament. 

 Worldbuilding: in the opening round, X beat Y using the skill Z, A beat B with the trait C, and so on. 

 Step two, version 1: have twists in the second round. All the matches should seem predictable to the reader, but the author reveals little-known facts which change the outcome. Big guy should beat little guy because he's big, but the little guy capitalizes on something established in round 1 to overcome big guy. Not merely plausible, but realistic. Go all [based on a true story].

 Step two, version 2: make it symbolic. The factions in the tournament should represent something (not merely a contingent geographical area) and the individuals in the factions should represent some inner subset. The tournament then tells the story of the interactions between the symbols. As a stupid example, oriental elements. The wood team beats the water team which beats the fire team which beats the metal team which beats the wood team. 

 Or put it this way: titans vs. aesir vs. olympians vs. jotun vs. niphilim vs. annunaki. Now that would be a set of epic fights. Myth of the creation of the world and the arc of history to the final end, tournament ver. Dunno who I even root for. Odin vs. Mars, fight! Thoth vs. Athena! Hermes vs. Quetzacoatl! Tiamat vs. Typhon? A fantastic show no matter who wins.

 Tournament writers don't do any of this. You know they decide who wins fights based on whoever they like the most. Skills and strengths are all over the place, depending on where they feel like making the plot go...insofar as the plot goes anywhere during a tournament. Rarely even use bad luck as a fig leaf, they just power characters up and down and hand out idiot balls. Whee.

 Story tournaments have no consequences, except for the parts outside the actual tournament itself. Bets or underhanded scheming. Even more meaningless than in real life. You get a medal, yay, then the author never so much as mentions the medal again. 

 Consider typical xianxia author. "Support character used clever water technique in upset win, so hidden water master reveals himself and takes the character as a disciple, upgrading him to deuteragonist." Literally one sentence of events, which will be casually dragged out for 48 chapters. If a main character threatens to get thrown out of school or whatever due to bad tournament performance, they'll merely bypass the hazard using a deus ex back door.

 So, yes, Simulacrum Leonard. Tournament arcs suck. They don't have to, but until the fall of Empire, they always will. Tournaments are tolerable if there's only a few fights, and it's a contrived excuse to have the characters physically batter each other. The reader already knows A will beat up B, but you do want to actually see it.