Hahaha well would you look at that! @LordofLuck, I tip my wide brimmed hat to you good sir.

I took a scientific approach to see who would win.

I figured that it all really came down to whether the Foxhead medallion block TP. So I made it a equation:

Winner= whether medallion blocks TP

Then I figured that since we have no true way of knowing whether the medallion blocks TP its really just up to chance. So you could also see it as:

Whether medallion blocks TP = Chance

Of course chance is ruled by luck so

Chance = luck

And Mat is the Lord of Luck (I don't think he is ever actually called that but still, it sounds cool) so

Luck= Mat

And if Medallion blocks TP=Chance=luck=Mat that means they are all exchangeable which means:

Winner= Mat

Or if you want it written out you get:

Who would win would be decided by chance which is governed by luck which will always side with Mat.

Oh and I was very disappointed that not once was Avendesora or lightning bolts listed as one of Mat's weaknesses. That would have been hilarious...

So I really liked this idea of Fain becoming the next DO but I had two problems with it:

1) Its too Final Fantasy X/Sinish

2) Through out the books Fain's evil is said to be a different, even oposite, kind of evil than the DO (I like to see it as the DO representing the Evil of Nature or the kind of base primal evils that exist like rage, lust, and fear and Fain representing the Evil of Man or the evils that are reflections/refined versions of the base ones such as greed, paranoia, and insanity that are really just unique to humans and as such can be seen as man made)

At first I thought that Fain's replacement of the DO could be used as a metaphor of sorts, the accention of man back to civilization as shown through the replacement of the base evils with higher evils. (kind of like how the old DO's release represented the collapse of civilization, or the AOL, when it's people gave into their primal/base urges) But then I started thinking about the never healing wound on Rand's side and remembered that it is routinely mentioned that the two wounds and their respective evils kind of block each other out. This got me thinking and eventually lead me to think of a theory of my own: Fain will somehow be used to reseal the DO.

Pretty far fetched right? But it does address somethings like the fact that Rand can't seal the Bore like he did last time + saidar, as that would produce seals. This is bad because seals would act as a reminder that the Dark One exists and for the Ages to come full circle people have to forget he exists. It also creates a way to end the Rand, Fain, Dark One love triangle that the books have built up. Fain could kill Rand as he is trying to form the seals and, having gone beyond madness to the pont in which he came back and went past it a second time, jumps into the Bore (the Bore becoming a physical thing due to Rand removing all the seals) and attempts to kill the Dark One. But, as shown through Rand's wound, Fain and the Dark one can never actually kill each other and so this effectively seals the Dark One back up as he cannot get through Fain to touch the world and Fain will never stop being in his way/trying to kill the Dark One due to his madness.

So my theory pretty much holds no water but I was struck with it while reading this and I found hysterical the mental image of Rand standing before the Bore and, discovering that his attempts at sealing the DO have failed completely, having a complete meltdown in which he resorts to picking up anything within arm's reach and chucking in at the Dark One. At that moment Fain, seizing upon Rand's moment of weakness, lunges at Rand- only to to have Rand grap Fain by the neck mid-leap and hurl him at the Dark One without even realizing who/what he was throwing. Fain hurtles into the Bore and the resulting clash between Fain's Evil of Man and the Dark One's Evil of Nature causes the Bore to collapse upon itself, resulting in a huge shockway that results with Rand standing before this crater with this completely dumbfounded blank look on his face with the book ending with him stammering out a, "uhh, what just happened?"