Ludwig announces Smash invitational on same day as Panda Cup Finale
Ludwig “Ludwig” Ahgren announced Friday that he will host the Scuffed World Tour, a Super Smash Bros. invitational meant to replace the recently-canceled 2022 Smash World Tour Championships. Ludwig will host this event on December 18, the same day as the finals of the Panda Cup Finale.
In light of Panda/Nintendos lackluster response I’m happy to announce
🎉The Scuffed World Tour🎉
A one day melee/ultimate event
Sunday 12/18
Featuring the 8 highest placing SWT competitors
All with the goal to raise money for VGBC
See you there 🙂
— ludwig (@LudwigAhgren) December 2, 2022
Ludwig has invited the following players to his tournament:
- Melee
- Juan “Hungrybox” DeBiedma
- Masaya “aMSa” Chikamoto
- Zain “Zain” Naghmi
- Cody “iBDW” Schwab
- Joseph “Mang0” Marquez
- Shephard “Fiction” Lima
- Johnny “S2J” Kim
- Aaron “Professor Pro” Thomas
- Ultimate
- Leonardo “MkLeo” López Pérez
- Carlos “Sonix” Pérez
- Mashita “acola” Hayato
- Angel “Onin” Mireles
- William “Glutonny” Belaid
- Paris “Light” Ramirez
- Michael “Riddles” Kim
- Samuel “Dabuz” Buzby
If any of the above players cannot attend, Ludwig will instead invite the next highest-ranking person on each game’s respective Smash World Tour leaderboards. During the event, Ludwig will raise money for VGBootCamp, the tournament organization team behind the Smash World Tour.
More about Ludwig’s event and the Panda Cup
According to the Smash World Tour organizers, Nintendo declined to grant them a license for the 2022 Championships and told them it expected them not to operate a commercial tournament without a license. Nintendo put out a formal response in the middle of the night on Friday, claiming that it verbally informed the Smash World Tour organizers that they were not required to cancel their event.
A couple hours before Ludwig announced his tournament, Panda Global put out a statement responding to accusations that CEO Alan Bunney threatened that Nintendo would go after TOs who didn’t add their events to the Panda Cup. The organization sided with Nintendo and did not announce any disciplinary action for Bunney. Panda’s statement has been met with widespread criticism from the Smash community, including players and content creators sponsored by Panda.
— Panda (@PandaGlobal) December 2, 2022
Because of the Smash World Tour’s cancellation and Bunney’s alleged actions, multiple people have called for a boycott of the Panda Cup Finale. Nearly half of the invited Melee players have publicly announced their intention to drop out already.
Now, Ludwig has scheduled his own event as a likely protest of the Panda Cup. The Scuffed World Tour will take place one week after Ludwig’s Mogul Chessboxing Championship.
