Queen's Cup III

## Overview

Before the tournament started, new Commissioner Monica Bellucci dubbed The Queen's Cup, "the loser's cup". When reporter Philippa Forrester pointed out that Bellucci had failed to win Queens Cup II, Bellucci fired her in rage and appointed Barbie Ferreira in her place. Bellucci felt that The Pantheon had both cheated and received preferential treatment by the old regime. As part of a major shake-up, she reinstated a number of defeated opponents of the (at that time) four leading Pantheon members Jennifer Connelly, Michelle Pfeiffer, Liz Hurley and Scarlett Johansson. These she put in groups of four and labelled them "Victims of Connelly", "Victims of Pfeiffer" and so on. She also changed the structure of the tournament to have group stages in a round-robin format with all four semi-finalists now qualifying for the next WWYD tournament. The second, third, and fourth placed contestants would later receive #13, #14, and #15 Seed status respectively but this was not yet implemented. In the event, none of Bellucci's reinstatements won the tournament, instead the final was won by Cindy Crawford, who would later join The Pantheon and defeat Bellucci herself in WWYD4. Note that because Bellucci had fired Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson before the tournament started and because their replacements Al Pacino and Paolo Maldini were only contracted for punditry duties on WWYD4, this tournament marks the only time Piers Brosnan and Ian Wright, usually Reserve Analysts, lead the analyst team.

## Storylines and Controversies

The new format allowed the superstars to gain a lot of experience, and to establish the real strength of the competitors over the course of the group games. For example, the eventual winner Cindy Crawford was also far-and-away the strongest contestant in the group stages with an average score of 77 and three wins. The only other superstar with 3 group-game wins, Denise Richards, also reached the final and was defeated by Crawford as her lower average of 72 might have predicted.

Two of the groups finished on extremely tight points. In Group B, Rachel Weisz, Raquel Welch and Catherine Bach all finished on 6 points, and the same occurred in Group D with Catherine Zeta-Jones, Kelly Brook, and Grace Kelly. Weisz and Zeta-Jones both advanced due to a higher average score and both would lose their semi-final matches against Crawford and Richards respectively.

Four superstars, Pamela Anderson, Debbie Harry, Emma Watson (who had once been in the Elite Eight), and Christina Hendricks all finished their groups with zero points. Harry's average of 26 holds the current low record for the tournament, and her overall record of 4 played, 4 lost, average score 29 is the worst in terms of average. However, Hendricks officially became the worst WWYD contestant in history with 5 games played and 5 losses to her name, even though her average of 43 suggests that many of her matches were closer than the statistics suggest.

As with Brooke Shields before her, winning The Queen's Cup established Crawford as a major star in WWYD and she finished third overall in WWYD4 after drawing with Shields herself in the third-place playoff. Crawford also joined The Pantheon and became best friends with Shields. Crawford is said to have won the tournament by dazzling the fans with her mastery of Route 2, which up until that point had not been displayed at a world-class level.

## Links

* Group Stage Round 1
* Group Stage Round 2
* Group Stage Round 3
* Semi-Finals
* Final