Time to decide the Ultimate Winner of Survivor. For the next month or so, we’ll have weekly polls pitting former winners in head-to-head match-ups until we get from 32 down to 1. While we cannot tell you how to vote, the intention of this tournament is to judge winners by the season in which they won, not their collected body of work. You decide what that means to you and what the Ultimate Survivor Win looks like.

We continue with the sweet sixteen round of the bracket. Let’s see if this round gets a little more interesting

Voting ends Tuesday, February 28

1. Richard Hatch (Borneo) vs 10.Tom Westman (Palau)

Wow. Two legendary winners here. Two of the very best games in the old bracket. Hatch practically invented this game. He ran circles around everyone else because they were playing checkers and he was playing chess. My favorite moment of Hatch’s win though is when he gave up on the last challenge knowing that he was going to the final with either of Rudy and Wiglesworth and that the only way he gets Rudy’s vote is if someone else voted Rudy out. The fact that that is exactly what happened just made it all the better.

Whereas Tom had one of the most complete and dominating victories ever. There was a feeling before Tom won that the leader could never win. Tom proved that wrong. Moreover, very few since him have managed to emulate him. Tom’s win stretches throughout the entire game too. The reason his tribe kept winning pre-merge was because of Tom, because of his leadership and his own physical talents. And lest you think that Tom was only a challenge beast, remember when Greg tried to vote him out and he convinced two other people to go to rocks for him? Or how he manipulated Ian off the buoy after 12 hours? Tom is one of the best physical competitors ever, but don’t for a second think that he wasn’t also a great social player who kept his tribe together and made them into the most dominant immunity machine we have ever seen.

So, yeah, if it sounds like I am pimping Tom a bit, I am, but that is because we all remember what Hatch did, but what Tom did sometimes gets simplified and forgotten.

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14. Earl Cole (Fiji) vs 11. Danni Boatwright (Guatemala)

This is an interesting matchup. Two winners who have never come back. Danni is one of the most unlikely winners. Someone who seemed like she should have been voted off time and time again and managed to work her way into the final. I will never understand how she convinced Rafe to vote out Lydia instead of her. Mind boggling. Earl, on the other hand, never seemed threatened. He had tight alliances and a great partnership with Yau-man. His biggest obstacle was getting Yau-man out at 4. Well that and the Four Horsemen. Heck that gif alone might be worth voting for Earl.

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14. Parvati Shallow (Micronesia – Fans vs Favorites) vs 12. Aras Baskauskas (Panama – Exile Island)

Poor, poor Aras. This might be the easiest decision in this bracket, even if you believe like someone around here (cough, Andy, cough) that Parvati’s win is the most overrated in the game. For the record, I think Parvati played a better game in HvV, but her Micronesia win is still damn good and easily better than Aras. Aras did have some good qualities in his win: he helped hold the most dysfunctional alliance of all time together, called the whaaaaambulance on Terry, and was friends with Cirie! I mean these things are worthy of celebrating, but they aren’t as good as anything Parvati did in Micronesia.

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15. Todd Herzog (China) vs 13. Yul Kwon (Cook Islands)

This seems like a matchup between two winners who won through great social games, who received a lot of help from an ally, and who were both well spoken and convincing at tribal. I value Yul’s strategy game higher than Todd’s, but Todd may have had a better social game, something he was a master at. He formed tons of bonds and made people feel comfortable. Of course, Yul did the same. Remember Todd’s final tribal performance? Awesome. Or Yul strong-arming Penner with the idol? He invented the move of using the idol for leverage. Some people might discount Yul’s win because his idol was super powered, but Yul had such control over his alliance that I am not sure it would have mattered.

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Don’t forget to vote in the other division:
Modern Division