On the Melee side, names like Armada, Mango, Leffen, HungryBox and the like all came to play. Mew2King attending CEO would have made it the first national with 5 of the big 6 attending but flight complications had it otherwise. Smash 4 on the other hand, was even more hype due to the sheer amount of rivalries and storylines leading into it. The one thing that really set the tone was the bounty ZeRo had on his head. Almost everyone was out to get it and this further amplified his role as "the man to beat".
Melee
If one could describe the results of Melee singles, the word for it would be "unexpected". Going into the tournament, there were two favorites to take it namely Adam "Alliance | Armada" Lindgren and Joseph "C9 Mang0" Marquez. Two other members of Melee's "Sinister Six", Juan "Liquid HungryBox" Debiedma and William "TSM Leffen" Hjelte, were also in attendance but were not expected to place within the top 2.
Earlier on, the biggest upset of the tournament happened wherein Shroomed defeated Mang0 in Winners Quarters. To some, this setup something people call "Mang0 Losers Runs" wherein Mang0 gets knocked into Losers Bracket but proceeds to win the entire tournament.
Top 8 opened up with Losers Eighths and a relatively new player matchup in the form of Westballz versus the newly sponsored CT | The Moon. The matches went back and forth with Westballz clutching out a 3-2 victory after The Moon almost came back from a potential 4 stock. The second Losers Eighths set was between Plup and Mang0. Like the previous set, Plup also took Mang0 to game 5 but a windmill play on Pokemon Stadium secured Mang0 the win just before Plup ended his tournament run.
To decide who would be facing Mang0 and Westballz, Winners Semis was run with the two Swedish Foxes on opposite sides. With Leffen and Armada 3-0'ing Shroomed and HungryBox, Winners Finals was decidedly a Swedish affair.
For most of the part since APEX 2015, Armada seemed to have had Leffen's number during Fox dittos and was favored to win the matchup yet again. In a shocking bout however, Leffen took Winners Finals over Armada with a 3-0 score.
Back in Losers, both Mango and Westballz beat their opponents coming in from winners ( Hungrybox and Shroomed respectively ) which set them up to fight each other in Losers Semis. After defeating Westballz in a runback of their set from the latest Mayhem, Mango lost against Armada, who himself was still fresh from his defeat at the hands of Leffen.
Interestingly enough, CEO Grand Finals was the second All-Swedish one at a tournament featuring at least 3 of the "Sinister Six". The tournament being referred to here is BEAST V, which Mang0 also got 3rd at. Just like BEAST V, Leffen won over Armada. Although Armada took a game off of him, Leffen won the Fox dittos 3-0 and secured the CEO championship title.
Overall, this is great momentum for Leffen and the other top 8 players going into EVO but we'll have to wait and see what happens then. For videos of the event, you can check out VGBootCamp on Youtube and Twitch.
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To everyone who participated in the event on here, it's highly recommended that you claim your slot in the results page so that we can have full logistics of the event as well as to correctly allocate points. PopiPenguin is still exhilarated over the hype sets that happened during CEO. For any suggestions about future articles as well as this one, you can follow him on Twitter.
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