This article is part of our Dragon Ball FighterZ series.
He finally did it.
After four unsuccessful tries, Dominique "SonicFox" McLean finally beat Goichi "GO1" Kishida not once, but twice to take home the Combo Breaker 2018 title in Dragon Ball FighterZ.
When the two met last, it was at an exhibition during the grand opening of the Esports Arena in Las Vegas and Goichi had just finished dusting SonicFox in a 10-7 first-to-10 set. That was over two months ago and SonicFox was running a completely different team than he is now. Gone was the trio of Hit, Goku Black, and Android 16 and in their place is the new hotness of Gotenks, Cell, and Kid Buu. The change ended up making a world of a difference for SonicFox against his biggest rival in the scene at the moment.
With both SonicFox and Goichi winning their opening matches in the winners' side of the Top 8, the stage was set for another showdown between the DBFZ giants. Before things got started, SonicFox took the time to ask for a little help from the crowd.
Clearly, the crowd did their job as SonicFox opened right up with a win in the first game of the set. With the two scrambling in the final moments of the game, Goichi painfully dropped a combo and SonicFox immediately made him pay.
While Goichi bounced back with a win in the next game, SonicFox paid no mind and won the next two with little opposition to move on to the grand finals and send Goichi into the losers' bracket.
In that losers' bracket, it was Osaka Ryo "Dogura" Nozaki that ended up making the most noise. Originally starting out in the winners' side of the Top 8 where he fell to SonicFox in the opening match of the night, he dropped down and made a solid run (until he ran into Goichi, but we'll get to that). First he took out the gawd, Eduardo "HookGangGod" Hook in a surprisingly close 2-1 series before unceremoniously running right through Chris "NYChrisG" Gonzalez in the winners' semifinals.
That set up a losers' final slugfest between the Cyclops teammates, Dogura and Goichi. This is a matchup that we've seen get closer and closer as the weeks grow on. Just last week at Stunfest 2018, Dogura pushed Goichi to five games in the grand finals, which is exactly what happened here.
At the outset of the series, Goichi actually looked like he was still shaken from his earlier loss to SonicFox, as Dogura somewhat easily took the first game. Once he calmed down a bit, Goichi settled into a groove and eventually came out on top. Still, it wasn't before Dogura put up a fight with the help of a little bit of intimidation that Goichi was clearly have none of.
With that out of the way, it was time once again for SonicFox and Goichi to duke it out once more. Well, twice more.
In the first set of the grand finals, Goichi looked like a man renewed. Having gotten himself sharpened up with the match against Dogura, he looked ready to handle everything that SonicFox could throw at him. That's not to say that SonicFox didn't put up a fight, as he did manage to pick up a game. But Goichi shook it off and reset the bracket with a 3-1 win.
Once the reset got underway, though, SonicFox was clearly a man on a mission. He was relentless with his pressure, perfectly reading and reacting to everything that Goichi could throw at him. In every game, SonicFox was opening up Goichi with only a couple mixups, never letting Goichi take his turn at pretty much any point. Throughout the entire 3-0 sweep, SonicFox only lost three characters before letting off what had to be the most satisfying popoff of his career once he hit that last level 3 super with his Cell to close out the win.
Now that SonicFox has picked up this big win, it's almost time to do it all over again. In less than two weeks, seven members of the Top 8, along with nine other competitors will meet up at the Summit of Power to wage war on each other for three days straight at the Summit House in Los Angeles.
Will SonicFox take down Goichi again? Will Goichi get his revenge (which he's already plotting)? Or will one of the other 14 players surprise us all and take down the two titans of the game? Luckily we've only got to wait 12 days to find out the answers.
