With Let’s Make Big Moves finished and the new Panda Global Rankings coming out, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is kicking off 2020 with a bang. Sunday at Glitch 8: Missingno created an even bigger bang with huge upsets and exciting moments. Viewers on Sunday got a peek of what’s next to come. Next weekend is one of the biggest tournaments of the year, Genesis 7. Here are the top three story lines coming out of Glitch 8.

A Motivated Stroder

After an insane first half of 2019, Guillermo “Stroder” Martinez, Jr. took a step back in the last couple of months of the year due to personal reasons affecting his gameplay. Stroder, the 29th ranked player in the world on the first PGR, got left off the list in the latest edition. In recent weeks, Stroder said on Twitter in the days leading up the Glitch and the new PGR reveal, that he wanted to be left off to lower expectations. With nothing else holding him back, he showed why he is still one of the best players in the world at Glitch 8.

Stroder cruised all the way to top 32. Then he went up against the number one seeded player, Maister. After going down 2-0 in the best of five, Stroder reeled off three straight wins to take the biggest upset of the tournament. Stroder moved onto Winners Quarter-Finals. However, he wasn’t done. In Winners Quarterfinals, Stroder took down the 9th seeded, Cosmos 3-1. Stroder was now in Winners Semifinals, his best placing at a PGR A-tier event ever. After falling to 4th and 6th seeded, Tweek and ESAM. Stroder officially placed 5th in the tournament.

Stroder posted on Twitter after the event that he thinks he is finally finding his true self again. If this Stroder shows up to Genesis 7, a repeat of Glitch 8 just might happen.

Tweek 3.0

Since the start of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Gavin “Tweek” Dempsey has been a top 5 player in the world but the thing that has kept him from being the best is his inability to find the character(s) that best suits him. Tweek found sucess with Wario in the early part of 2019. But then Tweek found himself switching the more unconventional, Pokemon Trainer, heading into the middle part of the year. Tweek also saw sucess with his new character in the middle half of the year. But couldn’t replicate the results he had with Wario.

In the last few tournaments Tweek has entered, he started to use his signature Wario more often in hopes of getting that victory spark he once had. At Glitch 8, the spark ignited. Playing almost entirely Wario, and Roy/Wolf to cover bad matchups, Tweek took home the gold and won his first A-tier event in over six months.

The new and improved Tweek is looking like his old self heading into Genesis 7.

The Ascension of Dark Wizzy

Rasheen “Dark Wizzy” Rose, is the best Mario player in the world. He has been making a case for one of the best players in the world too.

After a rather disappointing 65th place at EVO 2019 back in August, Dark Wizzy hasn’t disappointed since. He has placed lower than 7th only twice in the last six months. One of those was still an impressive 17th out of 2708 at Super Smash Con 2019, a PGR S-tier event. Dark Wizzy has been on a roll but even though he has made top 8 at eight tournaments in a row leading into Glitch 8, there were still doubts in the Mario main’s ability to take the next step into the elite. At Glitch 8, he might have silenced the haters for good.

Dark Wizzy making top 8 was expected but what wasn’t expected was a top 2. His top 8 at Let’s Make Big Moves, the first S-Tier event of 2020, was great. His performance at Glitch 8 was more impressive. Dark Wizzy made it to Winners-Semi Finals by beating Fatality, the 48th ranked player in the world. After that, Dark Wizzy stepped it up by defeating top 10 ranked player, Dabuz in a convincing 3-0. This gave him a spot in Winners Finals against Tweek. Dark Wizzy went up 2-0 on Tweek before being reverse swept and losing the set 3-2. He then bounced back and trounced the 6th seeded, ESAM in Losers Finals to set up a rematch against Tweek in Grand Finals.

Dark Wizzy swept Tweek in the first set of Grand Finals 3-0, before losing the second set 3-1, and placing second. Out of his current streak of nine straight top 8’s, this one was the the best yet with wins set wins over three of the top 20 players in the world. If Dark Wizzy continues to play like this, then the streak could reach double digits next weekend at Genesis 7.

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