Wolfey Glick to host Host Sword & Shield Super Smash Bros. Invitational
Former Pokemon World Champion Wolfey Glick has announced he will host Pokémon Sword & Shield Super Smash Bros. Invitational, which will see eight Pokemon and eight Super Smash Bros. players come together and compete in eight teams of two, playing Pokemon VGC.
The 2016 Pokemon World Champion Wolfey Glick has made a name for himself not only due to his success as a VGC player but also as a very respected and active content creator and is widely regarded as one of the most well-known esports personalities in the world.
The year 2019 has been highly successful for Glick, who has been on a tear with content, yet decided to end 2019 with style and announced he will host his own tournament – Sword and Shield Super Smash Bros. Invitational.
The announcement surfaced on Wolfey's official Twitter earlier this Saturday, where he posted a short video unveiling his very own tournament as well as 16 participating players, who will team up in order to compete for the title of the champions.
https://twitter.com/WolfeyGlick/status/1211007156352368642
The premise of the Sword and Shield Super Smash Bros. Invitational is for eight Super Smash Bros. players to team up with eight Pokemon professionals in order for Pokemon players to learn their Smash counterparts in VGC competitive battling. The event will take place on Sunday, January 12, meaning Smash pros have about two weeks to hone their skills and learn the ropes of VGC battling.
Eight teams of two will look as follows:
Pokemon player – Smash player
Michael Lanzano – Ludwig Ahgren
Ashton Cox – Justin “Plup” McGrath
Eduardo Cunha – Eric “ESAM” Lew
Justin Carris – Kris “Toph” Aldenderfer
Aaron Traylor – Zain Naghmi
James Baek – Hugo “HugS” Gonzalez
Aaron “Cybertron” Zheng – Jason “Mew2King” Zimmerman
Markus Stader – Jacob “Alpharad” Rabon
While there is no knowing how the pairs will compete at the tournament, we can draw some lines and see that there are a few duos who stand out.
The Mew2King and Zain duo should be an interesting tandem and possibly one of the best teams at the event, solely because they are both known to take challenges very seriously, meaning we can expect them to put in a lot of work in order to get ready for January 12.
Mew2King is also by no means a player we should underestimate. The 30-year-old is widely regarded as one of the best Smash players in the world and there is no reason to believe he won’t do his best to enter the tournament with a solid grasp of the game, meta and the strategy.
Ludwig and Alpharad are a duo, which we believe everyone should keep an eye on. Not necessarily because they will be one of the best, but because they are known for creating very entertaining content.
As we see it, there are two ways they could go, either they prepare well and enter the tournament with serious intentions to win, or try out some interesting sets just to make the event more interesting for fans to watch. At the end of the day, we will never know for sure what will they prepare, but one thing is for sure, they will be under the spotlight one way or the other.
Ashton Cox and Plup is another duo which could make waves, simply because both players are one of the best in their respective games. Cox has three appearances at Pokemon WCS where he finished top 32 twice and made it to the final 16 one time. He is also two-time LATAM International VGC Champion from 2017 and 2019.
Plup on the other side is currently ranked seventh at MPGR 2019 Summer standings and has two bronze medals from GENESIS 6 and Pound 2019, as well as four top-eight finishes in other Smash tournaments in 2019 alone. Suffice to say both are very talented "gamers" and should be a force to be reckoned with if they prepare themselves properly.
Last but not least, we have HugS and Baek, who come off as the strongest duo of the tournament. HugS is regarded as one of the best Smash players in the world, having won DreamHack Dallas 2019 earlier in June and finished fourth at DreamHack Montreal 2019 in September.
Furthermore, he is known for frequently playing and streaming Pokémon Showdown on his Twitch streams and has even made it into the top 100 in the competitive laddering last month, which suggests he already has enough experience playing the game to claim a solid result comes January.
The tournament, as mentioned will kick off on January 12, 2020, with all matches streamed on Twitch. While it will by no means be one of the biggest Pokemon tournaments of the year, it has the potential to be highly entertaining for Pokemon, Smash and other esports fans alike.
