Smash Rivalries Ends With The East Coast and Hungrybox Stealing the Show

The West coast squad ended up winning the crew battle on Saturday, but the East coast players showed up at Yahoo Esports Smash Rivalries singles tournament on Sunday. The top three players were all from the East coast, along with five of the top eight. The best player from the East coast, Juan “Hungrybox” DeBiedma, won his second consecutive event, taking it over Captain Falcon main Justin “Wizzrobe” Hallet.

Zac “SFAT” Cordoni happy. Photo courtesy of twitch.tv/yahooesports

Aside from Wizzrobe’s surprising performance, Sami “DruggedFox” Muhanna also stepped up and finished third. It was a day of interesting results as two of the expected favorites fell out of the tournament before the top six and both Joseph “Mango” Marquez and Jason “Mew2King” Zimmerman finished well below their average placings.

Wizzrobe not only made himself the third player in history to take out M2K with Falcon, but he sent him to losers with a 3-0 sweep. He went on to take a set off Hungrybox in the Grand Finals and beat DruggedFox, James “Duck” Ma, and Daniel “ChuDat” Rodriguez with a combined set count of 12-1. He ended up going down to Hungrybox 8-3 (3-0, 2-3, 3-0).

Hungrybox took care of business as usual. He once again proved how consistent of a player he’s become, as the rest of the God’s had one of their worst days in recent memory. It was also a fairly dominant effort, considering Hungrybox’s 17-5 record on the day. He did face three consecutive Fox players in Zac “SFAT” Cordoni , DruggedFox, and Joey “Lucky” Aldama before his match with Wizzrobe.

Graphic Courtesy of twitch.tv/yahooesports

Smash Rivalries provided us matchups like Ice Climbers vs. Captain Falcon in a winners semifnals. That’s almost unheard of at Melee tournament nowadays.

ChuDat moves to 2-0 against Mango in 2017 with another 3-2 win. Mango’s lack of Smash DI out of the Chu’S jab setups was his demise.

With this in mind, the Melee tournament landscape is starting to evolve and the top players are starting to get figured out. Mango’s off to the worst start to a year with three straight finishes outside the top five. He went Falco for every set aside from his matchup with ChuDat.

Here are the rest of the results:
1. Liquid Hungrybox (Jigglypuff)
2. Wizzrobe (C. Falcon)
3. DruggedFox (Fox)
4. CLG SFAT (Fox)
5. Tempo Axe (Pikachu)
5. VGBC ChuDat (Ice Climbers)
7. RNG Swedish Delight (Sheik)
7. C9 Mango (Falco/Fox)

The character diversity was seen throughout the tournament. The fact that a Pikachu, Ice Climbers, Captain Falcon, and Jigglypuff made deep bracket runs is evidence of that. Even with a Fox heavy field, the mid-tier characters hit hard.

Wizzrobe’s style and game plan switched drastically from player to player. Also, Jeff “Axe” Williamson uses Pikachu’s strongest tools to their highest potential.

For this reason, these top players have taken these characters to their limit. Hungrybox is redefining the meta-game with how people look at Jigglypuff. In almost every situation, Hungrybox seems to find the advantage. This was the case at smash Rivalries.

You can like The Game Haus on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for more sports and esports articles from other great TGH writers along with Blake!