Leonardo “MkLeo” Perez won Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Singles at Uprising 2019 in Seongnam, South Korea on Sept 1. Uprising 2019 was a C-tier with 129 entrants. It was also Korea’s first two-day Smash Ultimate major.
Impressively, MkLeo only lost a handful of games over the course of the tournament. He suffered his first game loss of Uprising 2019 to Hong Kong’s Timothy “XIFL” Chan in top 64. However, MkLeo followed up with a 2-0 victory over New Zealand’s Liam Aluf in Winners Quarters.
MkLeo started top 8 strong, scoring a 3-0 win against Japan’s Seima “Eim” Tonomoh. He then beat another Japanese player, “Gackt”, in both Winners Finals and Grand Finals. Gackt took one game off of MkLeo in each of their two sets. Though Uprising 2019 was not particularly stacked, MkLeo’s win was still notable given his second-place finish at Shine 2019.
MkLeo also won Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Doubles at Uprising 2019, teaming with Ishiguro “Raito” Tetsuya. They started off top 8 with a 3-2 victory over a double Dedede duo. This team consisted of “ZAKI” and Sejun Park (of Pokémon VGC fame). MkLeo and Raito also double eliminated “Lea” and Gackt. Both their Winners and Grand Finals sets went to game five.
Other results from Uprising 2019
Many Japanese players had strong performances at Uprising 2019. Interestingly, some of them succeeded by upsetting other Japanese players. Gackt’s run to 2nd place included wins over Lea, Tetsuhisa “Rain” Kosaka, and Eim. To place 3rd, Eim defeated ZAKI, Raito, and Rain. Finally, Rain defeated Raito and ZAKI en route to 4th place.
Luke “Regerets” Garcia is a Mii Brawler and Greninja player from the Philippines. Regerets had a respectable run to 7th place at Uprising 2019. He initially suffered an early loss to Malcolm “mloclaM” McNulty. However, Regerets was able to pull off a solid losers run in order to reach top 8. Along the way, he beat “MasK”, “SUGY”, and Aluf.
Due to the international nature of this tournament, it featured a great deal of diversity in its attendance. In fact, there were seven different countries represented in top 16. Those countries included Mexico, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and China.
