This article is part of our FGC series.
Remember last week when I said that tournament season was underway in the FGC? Well, things didn't stop one bit this past weekend as we had more events taking place all over the country. We had Street Fighter V and DragonBall FighterZ at DreamHack Austin. We had DragonBall FighterZ Smash'N'Splash 4 up in Wisconsin. And then we had even more DragonBall FighterZ at the Millennial eSports Tournament in Las Vegas. So yeah, it was quite the weekend. Let's get right into it.
Goichi bodies the entire state of Nevada
Okay, fair, that headline might be a bit of an exaggeration. The entire state of Nevada did not attend this tournament. Still, Goichi "GO1" Kashida straight up bodied every single person that came to this event. If you thought that he was going to all of a sudden fall of the face of the earth after losing to Dominique "SonicFox" McLean last weekend at Combo Breaker, then this showed you that he'll be just fine. While there were many, many matches that took place over the course of the two-day event, this one moment is really all you need to see.
Yeah, that's him getting a TOD (touch of death) combo with ZERO bars from the literal start of the match. Talk about an opener. It's true that there weren't really any big names at this event, as guys like SonicFox and Eduardo "HookGangGod" Hook were in Austin for DreamHack. Still, this man took everyone to task and looked to be in perfect form ahead of the Summit of Power this weekend.
Big Leff picks up a wet and wild win
Moving right along to Smash'N'Splash, we got to see the biggest of Leffs take home another DragonBall FighterZ tournament win. That's right, the man himself, William "Leffen" Hjelte, continued his North American Tour with a stop in Wisconsin. Much like the Millennial eSports (that capital "S" is the most triggering thing in esports, by the way EDITOR'S NOTE: anyone who capitalizes the "S" should have to play games with a laptop trackpad) event, this one didn't see any big names other than the winner. Well, there was Steve "Lord Knight" Barthelemy, who will also be at the Summit of Power this weekend. But even he's not considered Top 10 at the moment.
That being said, however, Leffen didn't have it easy the entire weekend. His road to the grand finals, might have been an easy one, only dropping one game in five series, but he was tested in the grand finals. Lord Knight gave him one hell of a run for his money during the 10-game set. There were a couple close games that could have went either way, but Lord Knight got the better of the scrambles early on and reset the bracket with a 3-2 win. It didn't get any easier in the reset grand final set, either. It took another five games for Leffen to finally put him away and take home the title.
It might seem like this was too close of a series between a guy who was invited to the Summit of Power and a guy that needed to get voted in but, considering that Lord Knight almost exclusively plays this game while Leffen splits time between this and Smash Bros. Melee, it's not too bad. We'll see who comes out ahead in just a few days.
Justin Wong puts on a classic performance at DreamHack Austin
Despite being almost 14 years removed from being part of the infamous (on his end, at least) Evo Moment 37, Justin "JWong" Wong is still cooking people like it ain't nothing. With the ridiculous Menat now in his arsenal, he's more deadly than than ever.
After just being a couple weeks removed from winning Toryuken 7, he's now added yet another win to his impressive list of victories. This was probably one of his greatest victories of the year, as he didn't lose a single game until getting to the Top 8. Even then, he lost one game to Victor "Punk" Woodley and then moved right into the winners' finals that he easily won 3-0 over Terrence "Terrence" Mikell.
Now in the grand final, he finally got a test in the form of Lin "Oil King" Li-Wei, who has been on a bit of a tear himself with three straight Top 8 finishes in the last three weeks. Even still, though, even Oil King could stop Menat from popping off and JWong pulled out the 3-2 victory to move himself into the 9th overall spot in the Capcom Pro Tour standings.
SonicFox picks up another win at DreamHack Austin
Stop me if you've heard this one before: SonicFox won a tournament that Goichi didn't attend. Almost without fail, you can bet that if only one of SonicFox or Goichi are in attendance at a tournament, they will win. Those don't really have an equal (yet) outside of each other. SonicFox's dominance is so great that Punk grabbed his hand during a TOD comboand SonicFox stillwon. In fact, he got all the way to winners' finals without dropping a single game. HookGangGod managed to take a game from him in that winners' final set, but SonicFox still cruised through.
Despite all of SonicFox's dominance throughout the tournament, he did get tested a bit by Chris "ChrisG" Gonzalez in grand finals. The set went five games, but it wasn't your typical set from either side. SonicFox seemed like he was simply playing with his food at times, while ChrisG was dropping combos like he was actually trying to throw the match. In the end, SonicFox was still the better player and took home the 3-2 win. This rematch should certainly be a bit more spicy come this weekend's Summit of Power when they're both playing to the absolute best of their ability.
