| 05 April 2010
LONG BEACH - The Street Fighter IV tournament at West Coast Warzone 2 played out like this year's March Madness. You had the upstarts making a name for themselves, with the veterans continually being pushed to the brink of elimination. The classic 5-12 had nothing on what was happening at this tournament. Nailbiters and upsets were a plenty. However, "chalk" eventually claimed the day, with three of the regions best taking home the final three spots.
Justin Wong won the tournament after running through three of Combofiend's characters: Cammy, Abel and Akuma. This wasn't the Level|Up tournament, but the feeling was still there that something special was going to happen.
Here's a recap of the title match, as well as other tidbits.
Title match result
Justin Wong 3, Combofiend 0
Match statistics
First-hit win percentage: Overall 62.5 pct, Justin Wong 71.4 pct (5/7), Combofiend 0.0 pct (0/1)
Rounds won: Justin Wong 6, Combofiend 2
Lead changes: 0
Average time: 30.0 seconds
The title match was over when
... OK, this is all subjective, really. However, I kind of had an idea where the match was going to end up even before Round 2 of Game 3 took place. I figured Combofiend, after switching to Akuma, was going to do something really crazy to throw off Justin in the first round of Game 3. That happened. As Combofiend was finishing the round, I said to myself, "If Peter jumps in for Round 2 and Justin counters, Justin wins the tournament." And that's what happened. Combofiend jumped in to start, Justin did a forward high kick followed by a snake strike, and that's that.
Player of the tournament
Andy OCR. He pulled off a lot of stunning wins and then had Alex Valle on the brink of elimination, but couldn't pull that one out. Honorable mention goes to Alex Valle for running the gauntlet, edging Ricky Ortiz in a MOTN contender, and nearly getting to the title match.
Other notes:
Out of the six rounds Justin Wong won in the title match, five of them he had more than 50 percent health remaining. I don't remember him ever having that in this tournament or in any other championship match he played.
