While we certainly enjoy the big time dog shows like the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show and Purina’s National Dog Show, they’re mostly a little too 1% for our tastes. After all, this is a blog of the people, with our blue collars and armpit sweat. That’s why we can appreciate a pooch contest that gives rescue dogs their moment in the sun, like the 2012 World’s Ugliest Dog Contest at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in Petaluma, California.

The owners of 29 “ugly” dogs vied for the ultimate title and $1,000 prize over the weekend, but when all the hairlessness and derpy tongues had crossed the stage, only one critter was left standing.

The United Kingdom challenger Mugly took the title after traveling around the world to wrest the title from contestants of questionable beauty with names like Handsome Hector, Creature, Rue, Icky, Spam-O-Rama, and Mouse. Mugly is the UK’s ugliest dog.

Said owner Bev Nicholson, “I couldn’t speak when they announced Mugly’s name. I didn’t know which way to look. I was shaking as much as the dog.”

Not to take away from the ugly efforts of the other dogs, but if I were looking to get a horse (dog) in this race, I’d most certainly go with the Chinese crested, because it just seems like those dogs are the New York Yankees of ugly dog contests. It’s almost unfair.

After the jump, check out the best of the winners and competitors of this year’s World’s Ugliest Dog Contest and be thankful that some people believe that mutt beauty is only skin deep, too.

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According to legend, when Genghis Kahn began his little campaign to conquer all of Asia and Europe, his most trusted sidekicks were his Tibetan mastiff, or gigantic dogs, that would eventually be responsible for the creation of most large breeds of dogs throughout the world. At one point during the 20th century, though, the breed became rare throughout the world and people feared that it would eventually become endangered. But like all cool vintage trends, someone eventually hipstered up and gave the Tibetan mastiff a second chance, and over the past 10 years the breed has seen a powerful resurgence.

For starters, the Westminster Kennel Club recognized the breed for the first time ever during the 2008 dog show, and that was the direct result of – and probably more likely the cause of – a growing number of competitions and exhibitions throughout China, involving just this breed. Over the weekend, the China Tibetan Mastiff Exhibition was held in Shenyang in the Liaoning province (it’s like the Chicago of China) and that massive beast above was the big winner of the event’s beauty contest.

If you’re thinking about getting in on this Tibetan mastiff action, you might want to start saving, though. Mastiff puppies sell for as much as $200,000 in the U.S. and Europe, and most breeders have a waiting list. But if you’re really fired up and ready to pass on that new house you’ve had your eye on, a man in Urumqi, Xinjiang (think: Los Angeles) nearly broke a world record when his mastiff, Black Pearl, produced a litter of 22 pups last month.

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