[Smash] EG PPMD Interview Post-SKTAR

Yeah, easily. When I walked into the tournament, I though he was gonna be the guy to beat, for sure. Mango's really good, really tenacious, really strong, really fast, gets in your face, gets crazy. People love him, so he's got all kinds of factors going for him. Set started out, I came in, pretty strong, doing what kind of worked a few months ago at APEX. That felt good.

We went to Dream Land afterwards, which is a good stage for Fox in the matchup and Mango's really good on it to, so that was hard. He was adapting to me throughout the match, but I managed to clutch it out, so I was pretty happy about that. But then he took me back, and he kind of whooped me. He continued adapting, and I was not. I was refusing to adjust and so he got me pretty good. And then we went to Final Destination, which in my opinion, is a good stage for Falco. He was still beating me in the beginning pretty solidly. He had a really good flow going for him, and the crowd was like "Yeah, get him" and I was like "Oh man, he's turning it around on me."

You can watch in the video and see where I sit up and I think for a minute: "What can I do differently?" and I come back down and I proceed to take, what I feel, a was pretty commanding momentum shift and take the match back from him. It was still pretty close in the end, but I felt like I was having a lot of control and I felt really good.

Yeah... Kind of. It's also kind of convincing when he beat me in the first game.

This was actually a very interesting set, which, playing with Jason, has not always been very interesting. For a long time, I would just play him and beat him, beat him, beat him again and he was getting so depressed. He would hate Falco and hate me, and you could see he didn't like playing me. He would be like "Oh I don't wanna do this", but he's been trying a lot harder lately. It's really nice to see him happy and having some determination again. He beat me a little last year, so I think that really helped his confidence. And I think he came into the set, and I didn't expect him to have so many more tricks for me, but he did; he had a ton of stuff for me. He ended up having the lead for the entire match. I was like "Oh crap." I wasn't ready for this.

But I started adjusting. I needed to get him to stop doing what he was doing. So I went to Final Destination with a goal of getting him off Sheik, and make him play the Marth ditto with me, because I needed his to mess up his flow. And I've been doing a lot of work on Marth lately, it's been fun. It's been great innovating the character, and I played really solidly against M2K at Apex, where I 4 stocked him. This time, it was definitely not a 4 stock. He looked like he had been practicing the matchup some, and I didn't feel quite as solid in it as I would like to. Regardless, I beat him with one stock at 0%, so that felt pretty good. It still felt solid enough for me, I was like "Ok, I still have this for now. I have to go and rework it, but that's fine." I felt pretty good about it.

So then he took me to Dream Land. We went back to Falco vs Sheik, and I had gotten him off Sheik, so I felt like I had disrupted his flow. And when we played, he was still kind of getting me a little bit, especially in the beginning, and I thought "Ok, alright, he's getting me. You know, that's fine. It's a bit of a struggle, but I think I can figure out and take apart what he's doing. It's like, he's doing this here and this here, he'll wait for me to do this..." and so I just started nailing him. Nailing him, nailing him, nailing him for the things he thought he was gonna get me on. And he starts falling apart. He starts bringing some bad habits out. And it ends up being a convincing win for me in that match, and I felt like "I'm up 2-1, and I thought this set was gonna be pretty rough based on the first match, feeling pretty good now. I'm ready to take it home."

Well, M2K did some goofy stuff where he wanted to go to Final Destination and we were gonna play Marth/Falcon, and he almost did that, based on the crowd. But no one really got excited enough for it, so he took Zhu's advice—and I don't like it when people try to get crowd advice, cuz it's not an equal like opportunity for everyone. Like if I asked them for advice, they'd say, "No screw you" so I think it's kinda silly—and Zhu told him to go Sheik on Fountain of Dreams, which is a pretty good counterpick. My plan was just to not get caught on platforms, because that's like the worst thing that can happen to Falco in that matchup.

Really, just like anyone else against Sheik, getting caught on platform, especially if you can't shield drop—which I can't, which is my own problem—it's still pretty tough anyway. Sheik's got long limbs, the platforms are a good height for moves that connect at max range and you can't punish. Good Sheik level, in my opinion. She'll just kill you. You can try to throw her off the top level if you're Fox; Falco can kill Sheik off the top, but it's hard to. And you can't get away to laser, it's too small a level. So, I thought that the best thing I could do was stay away from getting caught on a platform, and if he went high, just try to push him away from the top platform, because Sheik could do a lot of damage from there. So every time he went high, I pushed him away and every time he got low, I just kept adapting to the stuff he was doing.

Now, I don't think that M2K was fully giving it his all by the time that that match really got going. I felt like I had kinda beaten it out of him again after the third match of the set. So I think he made it a little bit easier for me. But still, had I slacked off on him at all, he would have gimped me and everyone would be like "Aw yeah, M2K, M2K" and it would have been a problem again. So it's very dangerous, letting yourself slide into a position where you get comfortable against someone that's seeming a little off, because you're in control of things a lot. So I maintained my control, Fountain of Dreams worked against him in a way, because he couldn't run away so well. The platforms change heights and they were lower a lot in that match, sSo I could just keep abusing him there. He would try to go high and I would just kick him away. So that all felt pretty good and it just worked out really well. I kinda 4 stocked him and it was fun.

I cannot begin to describe how big of a personal victory for me this is. I have not come to this tournament in a very good state, physically or mentally, to be perfectly honest. I am sick, physically. I have some type of thing that's making my head very fuzzy, it's making me very congested and it's kind of hard to breath. Mentally, I'm kind of emotional right now, not in a good way necessarily. I got out of a one and half year, kind of difficult relationship recently. It was my first and it was very difficult for me. There was a lot of good and a lot of bad that came with it, and it's been a source of a lot of pain for me and that hasn't been so long ago.

So I was really worried, coming into this, and everyone was talking about that and I really worried if I would be able to handle any sort of pressure of losing or whatever. And I worried about it a good bit. It kept me up last night. I said "I'm gonna go in, I'm gonna try and play some good Melee. If I don't qualify, then I'll worry about it when MLG comes around. I'm trying to have a good time and just enjoy the tournament." And that mindset has gotten me through tournaments before. It got me through Civil War, and it got me through this tournament. To come in with these disadvantages, with, I feel, the odds stacked against me, everyone trying to beat me, and with my condition being quite difficult... I felt like I was more likely to not win the tournament to be entirely honest. To prove to myself that despite the odds, I could still do it, is amazing for me. It makes me feel like I can really do anything. It really makes me feel like I can overcome whatever is a problem for me right now and it is empowering. It makes me feel powerful. It makes me feel like I can accept any challenge, I can do what I want to do, and I can be what I want to be. I can be powerful, I can be intelligent, I can be fast... I can be whatever I want. And it's beyond words, beyond feelings. It's an idea. It's a sense that I'm really coming into my own, I'm really developing as a person, and to win here today is so powerful for me. It gives me a lot of confidence in myself and that means more to me than any dollars, any plaque, anything. And that really makes me feel very good.

I didn't allow myself to think that until I got into Grand Finals, and I didn't allow myself to think that until I was beating M2K on Dream Land, Falco/Sheik. I was like "If I can't beat this Sheik with Falco... It's gonna be a long Grand Finals. It's gonna be a brutal Grand Finals, and I'm not gonna enjoy losing two sets." So I started beating him, and I started thinking "Ok, I think I got this, I just need to keep beating him and keep adapting and keep executing and then I can do it." And once I started playing the 4th match, I wasn't sure how he was gonna come out, if it was gonna be really hard or not. I was playing and I was like "I'm gonna do this here, I do this here, I beat him here, and ok, it's all coming together. Don't think about how you're gonna have it. Just keep enjoying the match, just keep doing what you're doing." And it felt real good and I succeeded and it was a powerful finish, I loved it.

I feel good about MLG. Like I was saying, I feel very empowered, I think things can only get better for me. Whether I win MLG or not is not the most important thing to me. If I go in to MLG, and I feel like I've learned a whole lot, and I play my heart out, that's what I really care about. That's what I want out of MLG. And I think that's going to take me a long way when I get there, based on what I'm starting to see here, I'm really excited and I really hope to keep doing that.

EVO, yeah... Aw man... Going for it! Out there in Vegas, out there in the desert, conditions are tough, but I think that as time goes on, conditions only get better for me. I'm looking forward to going out there, and I'm looking forward to challenging everyone, and I'm looking forward to clashing with these powerful people, who are so smart and talented, over the course of the summer. I'm really looking to test myself against them again and again. I'm hoping to come out on top, but either way, it's going to be great, it's gonna be wonderful. People are gonna love it, I'm gonna love it, you're gonna love it, guaranteed.

Shoutouts! EG, and all your wonderful sponsors, thank you. Thank you to Keitaro for running the tournament and all the staff. Thank you to NC Melee for supporting me. Thank you for all the Melee community for being awesome and the greater Smash community for being great and loving this great series. Thank you to my fans because you're wonderful, and without you, sometimes things would get hard, so I'm thankful for you for being awesome. Thanks to Twitch and Cactuar for training me, you guys are great. Thank you to my family, thank you to my friends. Thank you to you for interviewing me, thank you to anyone who's reading this because I appreciate it. I really enjoy talking, but it's nice if other people listen. And ummmm... I'm really happy. So shoutouts to me being happy.