| 01 December 2010
It's nice to wake up during the morning and watch a Nagoya Street Battle match featuring a character matchup only seen in the nether regions of YouTube. OK, Sakura vs Zangief isn't that far out there in terms of thinking, but it was nice to see it nonetheless. Uryo tried his best to do something with Sakura, then said fuck it after trailing 3-1 to Zangitan.
Zangitan eventually prevailed, 5-1, and he is now 1-1 in the tournament series, which will determine who goes to Switzerland to represent Nagoya Street Battle.
Stats of the match are posted in the stats section.
One stat you won't see there is something new I'm tracking, combo rate, the average amount of combos per round. I didn't think of it until this morning, when I was watching the previous NSB qualifier, and the two players were warming up. I thought combos were misleading but it turns out the player that had the most combos won every round except one, and this stat has held up a few times already with a couple other matches.
Zangitan had a combo rate of 2.733 per round, Uryo was at 2.333.
It gets a little bit more interesting from here. In the four games where Uryo used Sakura against Zangitan, both players had the same combo rate: 2.900 per round. And yet, Zangitan held a 3-1 lead. Obviously, in the rounds where Uryo won, he racked up a ton of combos against Zangitan, and that was evident in every round played.
In the two games Uryo used C. Viper, his combo rate dropped to 1.200 per round. Zangitan was double, going 2.400.
Also, Zangitan was 5 for 5 when on game point. We'll see what happens with his tournament future as the competition continues next week.
Video of the match, with commentary by Team Spooky, follows the jump ...
