Dungeon Mastery: The World Tournament

For those of you familiar with Dragon Ball Z, the greatest events to occur in the Animated series were focused around the World Tournament. The greatest fighters (and many not so great) the world has ever seen would converge on the Tournament to battle - sometimes to the death - for prize money.
And the Stadium was filled with a populace looking to witness the carnage first hand.
A World Tournament is useful as a Teaching aid for those looking to learn how to handle the basic character sheet. And because you only need to roll to hit, and factor in Strength to damage, or dexterity bonuses to armour class it means the Dungeon Master can host a large player group who use little more than their character sheet and the information they have written down. Sixteen Players can cough up their entry fee for their character (10gp). And pairing off into eight round one combat pairs, they can fight each other while other PCs watch on.
Combat and death? Normally if you reach zero hp your character is dead, and as DM you would need to decide if your tournament is a 'death match'. If you dont, once you reach zero hp you should be considered unconcious for the Tournament, though a natural 20 should always be the kind of hit that does hard damage that can kill or knocks the opponent from the tournament ring.

Tournament Etiquette

• Combatants knocked from the arena are out. Fight over.
• Unconcious combatants are at the mercy of their opponent though they may be removed from the arena with no combat roll.
• Accidentally or intentionally Killing your opponent is murder - unless its a death match in which case why are lawful PCs anywhere near this?
• Clerical healing between combat rounds is okay.

Eight victors from round one can pair off into four combat pairs and duke it out for round two. Four victors can pair off for two combat pairs in round three, and two finalists can fight it out for the 160gp prize money.
So without being a huge amount of wealth, winning a tournament should earn the player character some Experience and hard cash that can be spent on better equipment. A poor first level fighter might wind up 10gp poorer, 160gp richer, or dead.
Your players characters get an awesome origin adventure where their characters can all come together, while the players learn how to handle their character sheets.

You dont need to be delving the Dungeon Masters Guide, or Players handbook other than initially rolling up your characters. The Dungeon Master's load is reduced to storyteller rather than bookworm and dice roller.