Wanna see a Pikachu in a party hat wreck some Fox McClouds? Of course you do.
It’s not often that we see Pikachu make it super far in a top Smash Bros. competition—the character isn’t particularly high on the Melee tier list, and many of the players flock to more traditional characters like Fox and Falco. But this weekend during MVG Sandstorm, a national Smash Bros. tournament, saw a surprisingly good showing by Arizonan player Jeffrey “Axe” Williamson. Williamson is considered the best Pikachu player in the world, and we saw some of his thunder strike last weekend when he faced off against other Smash Bros. titans.
While Williamson didn’t win the tournament, he did make it all the way to the finals. Getting there meant beating top players such as Leffen Mang0. Williamson lost to Armada, a Swedish player that got 2nd place at Apex this year, the largest Smash Bros. tournament ever. But damn if it wasn’t a joy to watch Williamson get to that point anyway. I think the crowd at Sandstorm felt the same way—Axe gets heavily cheered on by everyone watching.
You can watch the matches in the Twitch embed below, courtesy of MVG_League. If you want specific timestamps, here you go: Leffen vs Axe: 2:36:45. Mango vs Axe: 4:29:00. Armada vs Axe: 5:54:05. EDIT: this video is unfortunately not working for many of you. Here’s the direct Twitch link.
After being defeated by Armada, Axe went on to duke it out against Westballz in Loser’s semis (you can watch this around the 06:22:00 mark). Axe didn’t pull through, but he still ended up getting third overall at Sandstorm, which is pretty great considering all the heavy hitters that entered.
I like to think that Axe performed so well partially because his Pikachu hat lent him so much power.
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