Farewell Tata, Yetu’s Big Upset, and Xaiop’s Revenge
This weekend was quite stacked, with 4 exciting local tournaments across West Asia. How about we take a look at the winners and upsets of this week?
To start off, the Kanaan brothers of Riyadh hosted an invitational, KanaanVitational OVA 1: Tata Edition, in homage to the departing player Tata, who’s leaving to Egypt for university studies. They hosted two events, a doubles bracket and a 3v3 crews bracket, which were respectively won by Tata and Gogeta who both played Samus, and the crew of Moza, Randy, and Blaster Boy! Good luck to Tata in his studies in Egypt, we wish him the best!
The next day, Underground hosted their Weekly KSL Local, where we saw two players, Saham and zYJR place Top 5 and Top 3 respectively, with both of them taking Soudsamus to game 5. On the other hand, Divine continues to dominate the Kuwaiti scene with another first place finish over Soud who is starting to look dangerous with his promising new main, Rosalina and Luma!
Further south of the Gulf, the Qatari scene saw a number of upsets at the tournament: 10th seed Kenji, after losing to Xaiop, managed to beat 3rd seed AMM in a nail biter of a set. Xaiop fulfills his redemption arc at this tournament as he defeated $BK, who was seeded to win the tournament, in Winners Finals (3-1). SBK would then lose to 5th seed iHasoon, in a tight 3-2 set to secure himself a spot in Grand Finals, where he his run would end at 2nd place against Xaiop.
Further down the coast, OU Gaming in collaboration with UAE Smashers, hosted a tournament that was full of surprises as well. Yetu defeats Seco in a powerful reverse 3-0 using Samus, ending his run at 7th. On the other side of the bracket Nyte, who’s gone 2-2 for the last 4 to 5 tournaments, has finally broken out of his curse by finishing at 5th place after being seeded to go 0-2, earning him an impressive SPR Score of +4*. His switch to Kazuya has worked well for him, as he was able to defeat one of the UAE’s very best players, Spinn, following his loss to Shiba in a nail biter of a set. Shiba would then win the tournament over 3li despite the fact that 3li was able to win the first set of Grand Finals.
On the online side of things, we saw Outcrazy having his first break out performance, finishing at 3rd, after a slew of 5th and 7th place finishes. In Grand Finals, we have the Arab Melee El Clasico, where the Jordanian Falco, SilverAkcel, duked it out against the Bahraini Marth, SteelRhydon, in both Winners and Grand Finals, where the latter secures his 2nd tournament win in a row after a two set win over SilverAkcel!
This weekend we’re seeing both the Kazuya and Samus agendas being pushed forward with remarkable success in the region, who knows what this may mean for the future of the Arab Smash League. For all things Smash in the Arab world, stay locked to the Arab Smash League.
*SPR +4: Seed Performance Rating, which measures a player’s performance relative to their seed. The 4 indicates the number of sets (grands reset doesn’t count) from reaching first place depending on the seeding and actual placement of the player: i.e. if a player is seeded 5th, he would be 4 rounds away from 1st, and if he places second, he’s 1 round away, which gives him a +3 SPR.