Read part 6, here!
What’s Next
Now I have to get to the sad part of my blog. As most of you know I’m having a baby, so I’m pretty sure I’ll be half retired. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still attend tourneys and try to win, but I probably won’t be able to practice and dedicate the hours needed to perform at the level I would want to. Thats why Zenith and Evo meant the world to me. It would basically be the last time you guys would ever see in-shape, top-of-his-game mango. That’s why winning was so important to me. I needed to prove, to myself more than anyone, that I could still win one last time.
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Read part 4, here!
Loser’s Bracket MaNg0
That loss hit me hard, because now I knew I’d have to bust a Pound 3 on the biggest stage ever. I had to play SFAT after and he should have beaten me as well, but I somehow clutched that one out as well. I was done with my day and just wanted to sleep and get ready for top 8. I was not happy at all with my play that day. Even later in the day while I was having a good time with my friends, it really bugged me that I was in loser’s. I was just thinking to myself, is this what I want my legacy to be? Losing to Wobbles and getting like 5th place at Evo. I was very, very dissapointed with myself, but I knew that the tourney was far from over. And it’s not like i’m not comfortable in losers, so I had that going for me. I went to bed and got like 7 hours of sleep (wanted more, but I’ll take it), and got myself ready for TOP 8!
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Read part 2, here!
Training for Evo
After Zenith I was pretty happy for myself but I knew that winning Zenith would be worthless if I didn’t win Evo. So the smash grind had begun. For the first time in I think YEARS, I actually practiced every day, at least 2-5 hours. The few days I didn’t play I took time out of my day to think about the game and think of new ideas that I would want to incorporate into my game. I watched matches of me getting junked and made mental notes to not to make those mistakes again. I watched matches where I destroyed and made sure to use some of those tricks again (but not all of them because I gotta stay fre$h LMAOO).
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Not sure where I would start my Evo experience, so I’ll start with Zenith.
Zenith
After losing NCR to HBox and Kings of Cali to PP, Zenith was a huge tourney for me. My heart wasn’t all there for those losses, but losing to people I know I’m way better than combined with the timing of Melee at EVO brought it back.
Going into Zenith, I just knew I wanted to win. I wanted to start the MaNg0 hype train for EVO, but going into the tourney I couldn’t get my heart into it enough and didn’t play like I wanted to win. It wasn’t until I lost to M2K in winners when I realized that I was tired of losing when I knew I could easily win. SO after the loss i took a walk by myself to get my mentality ready for the rest of the tourney.
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