This article is part of our Dragon Ball FighterZ series.
Dominique "SonicFox" McLean has reclaimed his spot at the top of the Dragon Ball FighterZ scene with a huge victory at VSFighting, claiming the second Dragon Ball on the DBFZ World Tour.
As a refresher, there will be seven events on the World Tour, with each one granting the winner a Dragon Ball. If one player were to secure all seven, they would get an automatic bye into the grand finals of the finals in January. In a bit of a surprising development, Kazunoko, winner of the first Dragon Ball at CEO, didn't attend this event. This assured that no one will grab all of the Dragon Balls, meaning the finals will proceed as a normal eight-player double-elimination bracket.
Speaking of CEO, after Japan completely ran through America with a combined score of 12-0 during the CEO Top 8 last month, the American players had a lot to prove this weekend at VSFighting. Was that a one time deal? Or were they suddenly washed up?
In an effort to get things back on track, SonicFox had a bunch of the top players in America gather at his place for the Summit of Pawer. We saw plenty of innovation from just about everyone in attendance over the weeklong lab session and this weekend was the first time we were able to see whether their efforts paid off. While we have to wait for Defend the North's Top 8 to get underway Sunday afternoon to see how Eduardo "HookGangGod" Hook Derek "Nakkiel" Brusca fare, it was clear that the Summit aided both SonicFox and Jon "dekillsage" Coello in a major way at VSFighting.
Let's start with dekillsage. While he's always had a ton of potential, he seemed to come up short at major events. After finishing 4th at Winter Brawl -- the first big tournament for DBFZ -- dekillsage finished 9th at Final Round and Combo Breaker, 7th at DreamHack Austin, 13th at the Summit of Power, and 7th at CEO. Against some of the best players in the world this weekend, however, he got back to business with an impressive 4th place finish.
Not only did he finish in the Top 4, but his only losses came to Ryo "Dogura" Nozaki and Goichi "GO1" Kishida. All weekend long, he seemed more sure of his play and fought with a level of comfort and confidence that we haven't really seen from him. Just look at this one sequence against Souji where he made a 1v3 comeback with Android 16 without taking a single hit.
That was the play of a man with a renewed sense of confidence in himself. He went on to take out Naoki "moke" Nakayama in a 2-1 series the very next round before falling to Dogura in the winners' semifinal. Not a bad performance after getting pushed around just a few weeks ago in Daytona.
Before I get to the infamous fox himself, I've got to talk about GO1. He was once on top of the world with a string of impressive victories that left him looking nearly unbeatable. Since that win at Final Round, however, he's now failed to pick up a win at the last four major events (Combo Breaker, Summit of Power, CEO, and VSFighting). Not only that, but he's only made the grand finals of two of those events. He might have done well enough to make Top 8 on the winners' side here, but that's when things started to fall apart.
After he took out Dogura 2-0 in the winners' semifinal, GO1 lost two straight series to get bounced from the event. First he lost 3-2 to SonicFox in the winners' final where he looked unable to fully deal with the wrinkles of SonicFox's new team of Bardock, Zamasu, and Android 16. Then he moved on to the losers' final where he was dusted 3-1 by Dogura. Yikes.
It's not as though GO1 is suddenly a terrible player by any means. Rather, the rest of the field has gotten so much better. GO1 needs to get back to the drawing board if he wishes to turn things around to secure one of the coveted Dragon Balls during the World Tour.
Now, it's time to talk about SonicFox. I wondered during the Summit of Pawer last week whether he would be sticking with this new team of his. Sure, it was an innovative bunch, but would he switch back to the team that won him Combo Breaker when the going got tough? That would be a no. And it allowed him to do stuff like this.
No one had an answer to this team given that Zamasu is basically not played at all in the upper echelons of the competitive scene. This allowed SonicFox to run through everyone on his way to a big win. He certainly wasn't perfect and still has some kinks to iron out with this team, but considering that he won the tournament without being reset by Dogura (this was actually the first time that there hasn't been a grand finals reset a major tournament in the lifespan of DBFZ), SonicFox is probably feeling just fine.
While the next World Tour event is at Ultimate Fighting Arena in France at the end of August, we'll get our next taste of some real action at EVO in just two weeks. Even though it's not a part of the World Tour, EVO will no doubt be one of the hypest events of the entire year.
