Last weekend’s Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 tournament at the Canada Cup ended with a pleasant surprise for many Marvel fans; Complexity Gaming’s Ryan “Filipino Champ” Ramirez defeated perennial favorite Chris “NYChrisG” Gonzalez in the finals, coming back from the loser’s bracket to win two sets in a row and hand Gonzalez his most decisive loss since his rise to the top last year. How’d Champ turn it around? I talked with Ramirez’s longtime training partner Long “ShadyK” Tran, the new media manager for Complexity Gaming, to see what Ramirez changed up for the Canada Cup.

Patrick Miller: You were recently brought on as Complexity’s media manager. What does that role entail? Ryan “Filipino Champ” Ramirez has described you as a coach and training partner; what do you do for his practice before/during/after tournaments?

Long “ShadyK” Tran: I’m basically in charge of providing fighting game content for Complexity Gaming. I’m responsible for creating, recording, and editing any kind of content related to fighting games. You can find a lot of our stuff at our YouTube channel, including our podcast featuring Ryan and I. As far as being a coach and a trainer for Ryan, it’s much easier to learn something when you have another like-minded person to bounce things off of. I’m that guy.

PM: What do your practice sessions look like? What’s the breakdown between training mode and matchup practice? How do you warm up on a tournament day?

LT: I actually don’t practice nearly as much as Ryan does. I scout more than anything and I stay updated on how UMvC3 is being played. I play probably, at most, once a week. To warm up on tournament days, I go into training mode, pick Vergil on point, set X-Factor to level 3, and… yeah ;). I try to watch as many UMvC3 streams as I can and since there’s ALWAYS some new stuff being created, I never run out of things to learn about the game.

I know Ryan practices a lot. He’s still the hardest-working person I know in the FGC (I hear Tokido practices just as much, though). Ryan probably spends 30% of his play time on his execution and 70% of his time playing against other people or in tournaments. He has a nice little training regimen going where he’ll stream his training while entertaining our viewers.

PM: FChamp has always been placing fairly highly at tournaments, but I can’t help but notice that he saw a downswing in early 2013 and an upswing once you came on board. What, if anything, did you get him to do differently?

LT: It’s hard for me to pinpoint what really got him out of the “slump”. I don’t think I can take much credit from him winning again. It’s true he didn’t perform as well for that period of time, but he was still always consistent on placing. One of the things I try to get him to do is STOP playing. I feel like you can’t play your best if you practice TOO much. Now, I don’t condone this in anything but fighting games — just anecdotal evidence from my perspective. I feel like if I take a week or two off of playing and then play again, I won’t be as robotic and my mind is a bit more clear and flexible.

PM: Frankly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen FChamp play like he did against Chris G in the Canada Cup finals. What did you two practice, and how’d you change it up from before?

LT: We actually didn’t practice, per se, for the matchup. I did give him a few ideas that I took from playing against another Magneto/Doom player (Rattana Phanthourath of Seattle). Rattana was using this strategy of super-jumping towards me as Magneto and doing a Magnetic Blast on the way up and then a backdashed Magnetic Blast on the way down. That really covers a lot of where Morrigan wants to be and it was really annoying. Ryan took this and applied it a bit to his vs. Morrigan play.

PM: You’ve been playing Morrigan/Doom/Vergil for a while now; how’d you practice to get good enough with that team to offer FChamp a decent sparring partner? Was there anything in particular you observed and tried to imitate in Chris G’s play?

LT: I didn’t really try to imitate Chris G’s gameplay, since Morrigan can really only be played one way. I did take a couple of his techniques (and added a few of my own). People who’ve played both Chris G and I say we definitely have two different styles of Morrigan, though. But, one actually wins (not me!). The biggest difference between us, though, is that I am a lot less likely to save my Morrigan with X-Factor (since Vergil is my best character).

PM: It seemed that Dormammu was key to FChamp’s victory over Chris G — something which many people had said for a long time, but it seemed for a while that FChamp was gunshy about leaving Phoenix for Dormammu. What prompted the switch?

LT: This is something I always found funny. Ryan just has two teams. There’s really no “leaving” a character. When you learn a character, you’ve just added that character to your roster of who you can play. Ryan definitely has the best Phoenix AND the best Dormammu, so it only makes sense that he switches his team depending on the matchup.

PM: At The Fall Classic, we saw Champ pull out a new pocket team (Morrigan/Dormammu/Phoenix). Where’d that come from?

LT: He’s actually played this against Chris G before, at ECT. He was supposed to win 3-0… but he lost his Dark Phoenix to Doom like 3 times in a row. Was a terrible fluke. This team counters Morrigan/Doom because Morrigan can’t do anything about Dormammu staying full screen and calling Dark Harmonizer and pretty much guarantees Dark Phoenix barring any brainfarts. We have a set of 3 FT20s on our FGTV YouTube, this was the origin of the counter-Morrigan team.

PM: Coach/mentor roles are a fact of life in athletic sports, and even eSports teams tend to bring coaches on board. Why do you think fighting games haven’t widely adopted a coaching class? Are there any other players in particular you wish you could work with?

LT: Well, it always comes down to the money doesn’t it? Fighting games don’t exactly draw in record-breaking viewer numbers, so there aren’t as many sponsors. Hence, not as many teams with money to go around for coaches and whatnot. We’re just fortunate to have a company like Complexity who believes in us and what we do. Hmm, as far as players I’d wish I could work with… I think my old buddy Daniel “Clockw0rk” Maniago would be fun to have on my team. I grew up learning Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 with him and he’s not terrible at UMvC3, so that’d be interesting. Nemo is another player whom I’d love to work with. That guy has an amazing mind for fighting games.

PM: I’m fascinated with the experimental format tournaments you’re running over at the FGTV house (maybe some day I’ll come by!). Why change things up? Are you doing it just to keep things fresh, or are you trying to practice different aspects of the game? What’s next for alternate rulesets?

LT: At first, it was really just to change things up a bit. One of my main priorities is keeping UMvC3 fresh, especially with our weekly tournaments. I feel like every other weekly gets stale. This isn’t anyone’s fault, it’s just how fighting games are. You can really only play locally and the same people will always show up to that local. But, I don’t want to see the same people winning with the same teams every week, and I think other viewers would feel the same. Why not play with the rules a bit to make things a bit more exciting for viewers? I don’t care if it’s at my expense. Take away my Vergil and my X-Factor and make me play outside the box a bit. As long as people are enjoying what they’re watching, I’m happy. The other angle is that it helps our scene get better by being a bit more flexible and not as auto-pilot with their characters. It makes you improvise a bit more and exercises that aspect of your skills. We’re not trying to make any kind of statement about how the game should be played, though. Just doing something different for the sake of being different.