Me and my friend, Tony, always sat around after each episode and used our current knowledge to predict the future. We predicted that he would win the fight against neji because
1) He did the whole promise-because-of-hinata-blood thing.
2) He needs to go up against gaara and stop him from ruining everybody at night time when the full moon hits.

So we were sitting down trying to think of whether sasuke will step up to the plate. And if he did would he win or not. Now please don't call any of these spoilers only because they are based off of previous assumptions and I really would hate it if they erased only a certain portion, called it a spoiler, and ruin it for me because then I'd know which assumption is correct. Please don't erase it.

It would make more sense if sasuke didn't show for the following reasons:
1) He really doesn't give a damn. He wants to kill Itachi and labels don't matter anymore.
2) He might be too busy training with Orichamaru and might have actually ditched kikashi sometime after gaara spied on them.
3) He doesn't want to go up against gaara because after what kakashi told him about how gaara fights, sasuke doesn't particularly want to risk dying for a title he doesn't care about. Again, his goal is Itachi.
4) If gaara and Sasuke were to fight, then gaara would lose and probably have used up most of his power in the process of losing, and wouldn't be able to storm the town later on that night.
5) I firmly believe that in order to stop gaara's freak form we haven't seen yet, Naruto will summon Gamabunta to beat him. But that will be later on that night. So gaara has to be at his best. In order to be at his best all the fights must pass him and let all the others fight to take up time until he faces off against Naruto (i.e. Sasuke will lose, or won't show up).

So in conclusion, gaara will not face sasuke and will face off against naruto. Whether naruto shuts him down completely so that gaara cannot face off against the town or whether the naruto-gaara fight is held at night time (full moon time) and gaara decides to screw the exam and take on the town then, I don't know. Damn this is a cool show because anything that does end up happening will be awesome and perfectly acceptable. Earlier we even thought that naruto might lose because it's based on performance. He might have just been really crazy and still lost but still made it as a chuunin. See? The writer wanted us to think that naruto can lose because we all know he's going to be a chuunin, so he won't have to win it all. Bah. I'm done. Tell me what you think.