Juicebox Abel Winter Brawl 6 Recap

What Winter Brawl 6 Meant for Me

             In the days leading up to WB6, I spent most of my leisure time practicing King of Fighters 13. I love playing it, and I hope that I can make as big of a splash in the KOF community as I’ve made in the Street Fighter 4 community. Regardless, KOF13 was my sole focus. I hadn’t practiced SF4 outside of  sporadic online matches and I didn’t pay much attention to who was entering SF4 at WB6.

Somehow I attained 2^nd place in SF4 losing only to Justin Wong in Grand Finals, while in KOF13 I had two wins followed by successive losses to RyRy and RogueYoshi. The results of the weekend were off-putting, but also inspirational.

I initially felt bad about my KOF performance. After talking with a few other KOF players, I’d learned that though my fundamentals are above average, I still lack matchup knowledge as well as general experience in tournament situations. This will be addressed in the coming months. I hope for a steady path of improvement all the way to EVO.

The Street Fighter 4 results were quite surprising. I was able to beat Sanford, Gridman, and Dieminion on the path to Grand Finals, just before my epic zero to six collapse against Justin Wong. It should be noted that I almost lost a match earlier in the bracket to a fellow Dominion Method Gaming teammate, Steven Delgado-Mendoza and his wild Blanka play. I won’t go into the details of my wins, as the stream is readily available in the Team Spooky archive. The loss to Justin is what I need to talk about.

It was pathetic. I couldn’t get zoning started with Juri, couldn’t get offense going with Abel, and couldn’t guess right in general. I felt ashamed for a few hours afterward. Things started to look a little brighter as Justin himself came to talk to me about the matchup and asked about some of the decisions I’d made. At the end of that conversation we agreed that I don’t play a character he’s scared of. This was a major revelation, one I was flabbergasted that I hadn’t already figured out.

Ever since I started playing games competitively, I set out with the goal to become the very best, like no one ever was. Anyone can tell that I’m not there yet. However, Winter Brawl showed me something important. If I’m going to break this plateau that I’ve reached (to go “super saiyan”, if you will), then the time is now. This is the highest I’ve placed at a major since getting 3^rd place at West Coast Warzone 3, where my final loss came from Ricky Ortiz, the other great Rufus. This is an obvious sign. My problem is Rufus. If I can gain the knowledge necessary to defeat either or both of these fighting game dreadnoughts, then I will be one step closer to the ultimate goal of winning EVO. Equipped with a sponsorship from DMG, there isn’t anything holding me back from accomplishing this goal.

Ryu said it best. “The more I learn, the more I realize how far I am from the end of my journey.” Indeed.