Not really. If I wanted to bully lower leveled players I'd drop in the ladder and do that, which I don't. I'm just comparing it to how tournaments in real life work. I feel the highest ranked/skilled players should be able to get 12 wins quite easily, whereas the situation is because the highest skilled players have to play each other instead of lower skilled players to get to 12 wins it can be pretty hard. Theoretically one could drop trophies/smurf to cheese 12 wins but I don't feel that is right or what Supercell intend people to do.

If both players are fixed at Level 9 then matchmaking shouldn't be necessary. Nothing to do with bullying as both players are the same level. I feel Supercell only do it to make the challenge artificially harder to encourage people to spend $$$ to reenter, which isn't a very good reason to screw with what should be a natural process (i.e. zero matchmaking when everyone is at 0 wins, those who get to 12 wins are already proving they are skilled, trophies shouldn't come into it).

Ironically you say I'm bitching about bullying lower level players but in reality the current system encourages bullies to smurf to lower levels in order to cheese wins.