Yesterday, Justin “Wizzrobe” Hallett stunned the crowd at the Fort Worth Convention Center Arena by defeating Juan “Hungrybox” Debiedma in consecutive grand finals sets, earning his first-ever tournament victory—at Texas super-regional OpTic Arena—over the world number one.
After losing to Hungrybox in a close winner’s finals set, Wizzrobe surged out of loser’s bracket with a vengeance, resetting the bracket 3-0 before edging out three consecutive games on Dreamland to win the second set of grand finals 3-2.
This is far from Wizzrobe’s first win over Hungrybox, but this victory is the recently unsponsored Captain Falcon main’s first over the top-ranked “god” since last April’s Smash Rivalries. As for Hungrybox, this is the first time the Jigglypuff main has lost to a player outside the top six in grand finals of a tournament since he fell to David “Darkrain” John at Tipped Off 4 in January 2009. As demonstrated by Hungrybox’s quick exit from the stage and Wizzrobe’s stunned silence, neither competitor expected OpTic Arena to end quite the way it did.
OpTic Arena’s top four was rounded out by overperforming newcomers Charlie “AbsentPage” McKinley and Connor “Bananas” Lamb, who respectively upset James “Swedish Delight” Liu and Johnny “S2J” Kim to ensure their spots in loser’s semi-finals. In seventh place, Oscar “Uncle Mojo” Malherbe tied with an underperforming Edgard “n0ne” Sheleby. Though n0ne was surely unhappy about his disappointing placement, he did receive a consolation prize in the form of a victory at Saturday’s Falcon ditto round robin event.
OpTic Arena was an action-packed event, but Wizzrobe’s historic double elimination of Hungrybox is undoubtedly the biggest story of the weekend. Two wins over the SSBMRank no. 1, who had defeated Wizzrobe in both of their other meetings this year, are sure to boost the young Captain Falcon main’s ranking—and hopefully help him find another sponsor to keep his Melee dreams alive.
