Three takeaways from The Comeback Smash Ultimate Singles
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Tweek finishes off Cosmos to win The Comeback.
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Three takeaways from The Comeback Smash Ultimate Singles

Tweek earns his second offline victory with Diddy Kong
Image of Dylan Tate
Dylan Tate
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Published: Aug 1, 2021 03:54 pm

VGBootCamp hosted The Comeback, its biggest in-person tournament since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, on July 31. The event featured some of the best Super Smash Bros. Ultimate players from Maryland and Virginia, as well as a few high-level competitors from other regions.

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Here’s a look at some of the biggest takeaways from this offline Smash Ultimate regional.

The top three show off their quarantine characters

Multiple competitors debuted the new characters they picked up over quarantine at The Comeback. Notably, all of the top three finishers used different characters than the ones they typically would have relied on before the pandemic.

Gavin “Tweek” Dempsey won the tournament using Diddy Kong, a character he found success with at multiple online tournaments. This marked his second major offline victory with Diddy Kong, following his win at the Momentous invitational. With his solid punish game and masterful control of Diddy Kong’s banana peels, Tweek beat Lorenzo “Disgaea” de Ocampo 2-0, “Mj” 2-0, Aaron “BONK!” Markovitz 2-1 and Troy “Puppeh” Wells 3-0. In addition, he defeated Brian “Cosmos” Kalu 3-2 in winners finals and 3-0 in grand finals.

Cosmos came into the quarantine era looking for a new character to replace his signature Inkling. While he initially tried out the likes of Pikachu and Corrin, but has since been practicing Pyra and Mythra. He masterfully made use of Mythra to quickly rack up damage and find edgeguards, while switching to Pyra to land powerful hits at kill percents. Cosmos was able to defeat Jason “Wal00igi” Lilly 2-0, Andrew “enhancedpv” Davis 2-1 and Marcus “Pink Fresh” Wilson 2-1. He also took two sets off of Chris “WaDi” Boston, winning 3-1 in winners semis and 3-2 in losers finals.

For most of The Comeback, WaDi piloted Mewtwo, his main from Smash 4. In the process, he beat Benjamin “Barking_Frog” K. 2-0, Noah “naitosharp” McCulley 2-0 and Christopher “TheMightyDialga” Arias 3-0. In Losers Semis, WaDi used Wii Fit Trainer to take Game 1 off of Michael “Riddles” Kim. After losing Game 2, he then used R.O.B. to close out the set against Riddles 3-1.

Riddles leans on his tried-and-true Terry during a deep losers run

Riddles started off The Comeback by playing the recently-released Kazuya. However, his new character failed him in his second match of the tournament, where he lost 2-1 to TheMightyDialga. From there, Riddles decided to bring back his more practiced Terry.

The decision paid off. Riddles went on a deep losers run in order to finish in fourth place, eliminating many high-level opponents in the process. Among his victims were Jerry “Jerry” Powell, Sean “Fang” O., Jason “Wal00igi” Lilly, naitosharp, Pink Fresh and Puppeh.

TheMightyDialga has his offline breakout at The Comeback

Prior to this event, TheMightyDialga was best-known as a Wi-Fi warrior. One of the few solo Bayonetta mains in the world, he previously ranked 50th on the Wi-Fi Warrior Rank v6. But, at The Comeback, TheMightyDialga put on his best in-person tournament performance to date.

TheMightyDialga’s breakout run began in pools, where his impressive control of Bayonetta’s combos scored him an upset over Riddles. However, he fell into the losers bracket not long after, as he dropped a set to Little Mac main and fellow Wi-Fi warrior Ethan “Peanut” Masterman.

Despite this setback, TheMightyDialga had an impressive losers run of his own. Along the way, he eliminated Barking_Frog, Caleb “smub” I., BONK! and Alexander “Iota” Diaz, with all of those sets going to the final game. Ultimately, TheMightyDialga finished in fifth place after his loss to WaDi.

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Image of Dylan Tate
Dylan Tate
Dylan Tate is an alumnus of the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a gaming journalist with a love for Nintendo esports, particularly Super Smash Bros. and Pokémon.
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