This article is part of our Dragon Ball FighterZ series.
Is it fair to call something a rivalry when one side has won every meeting? After a 10-7 win Thursday night in another exhibition match, Goichi "GO1" Kishida now holds an overall 3-0 head-to-head record against Dominique "SonicFox" McLean. SonicFox had his moments, to be sure, but at the end of the day, Goichi showed the world once more than he's the best Dragon Ball FighterZ player in the world.
Battle of the broken characters
While the brokenness of Android 16 and Adult Gohan hasn't changed in the week since Goichi and SonicFox met at Final Round, it seemed even more apparent just how strong these two characters were in this epic runback. Whether it be Gohan's overwhelming pressure that forces opponents to block for long periods of time or Android 16's ability to lock opponents up indefinitely with a series of command throws, both characters had moments of greatness throughout this series.
Knowing that Gohan was such a problem, SonicFox made sure to focus all his attention on downing the character as soon as he could during each game. Sometimes this was harder than it sounds, but when he managed to do it, he often found himself with a win because of it. Other times, SonicFox had to turn to his anchor in Android 16 and pulled off plays like this:
Even outside of his use of Android 16, though, SonicFox came into the series better prepared and looking a lot stronger than he did last week. In particular, his play with Hit seemed to have gotten even better, which is a pretty big deal since he uses the character as his lead. After the two battled back and forth while trading rounds back and forth, SonicFox came up with an incredibly clutch play that put him up 6-4 and seemingly in control of the match.
While Gohan is surely in an overpowered state at the moment, it's not as if that gives players an autowin. You still need skill and a willingness to adapt to the changing flow of a given match, and that's exactly what Goichi did. Anytime there was even the smallest whiff from SonicFox, Goichi was right there to punish with yet another combo string. Even when he lost Gohan early on, his Vegeta and Cell were expertly used and able to take down SonicFox.
Goichi's use of Vegeta was probably the most instructive as to the overall skill gap between him and SonicFox. Vegeta is a character widely considered to be used solely for his ability as an assist character, as it ranks among the highest in the game. As an individual fighter, however, Vegeta is not as strong. Despite this, Goichi made him look like a top tier character. This was no more evident than when Goichi used Vegeta to win his final game despite having to take out both Hit and Android 16 from SonicFox.
It's worth noting that SonicFox tweeted after the match that the d-pad on his controller was actually broken and leading to dropped combos in the last half of the set. He was seen switching out controllers between games towards the end, but SonicFox said the new one was "stiff but better than [the] broken one." Had he not ended up with controller issues things could have been different, especially with him saying that he noticed the issues when the game was tied 4-4.
Controller issues aside, however, it was clear that Goichi was a step ahead of SonicFox from the jump. As such, Goichi took the series and kept his title as the best DBFZ on the face of the planet right now. Things could change, though…
A new challenger
You heard that right. Well known Super Smash Bros. pro William "Leffen" Hjelte was just called out by Goichi. To those uninitiated with the DBFZ scene might be a bit confused about this, but it's very much a fully expected move.
Leffen has been grinding the hell out of the game since release and has reached #1 on the PC ranked leaderboards and #5 on PS4. Yeah, he's pretty good. So good, in fact, that he even won Wednesday Night Fights the day before (well, technically the day of since the tournament didn't end until 3 a.m. PT on Thursday) the Goichi/SonicFox runback. He's the biggest face in the scene and he's rising in the ranks. For Goichi, he's the next man up.
While we don't know exactly when this showdown will occur, the next big tournament that will feature DBFZ is Combo Breaker at the end of May. With two months more practice under both player's belts, this has potential to be even more exciting than what we've seen from Goichi and SonicFox. Whenever this goes down, you can bet it will be hype.
