MGL VERSUS: Weekly SSFIV: AE 2012 Results and preparation for SoCal Regionals

Hello, folks. Last night we had a quite a few people show up at Milpitas Golfland for a decent sized SSFIV: AE 2012 session and tournament.

SSIV: AE 2012 Top 8 (25 entrants)

1. Kelvin "Mak Daddy" Jeon (Makoto)
2. Kimo Pamintuan (Hakan)
3. Haaris Abbasi (Ryu)
4. Marcos "El Cubano Loco" Blanco (Claw)
5. Geoffrey "Uuyupop" Yoon (Guy)
5. Rocky (Cody)
7. Julio Fuentes (Yun)
7. Brian "BJ" Jeon (Cody)

Kelvin has been on fire as of late with his patented Makoto play earning his second straight tournament victory. Kimo tore through the brackets and had a reset in grand finals against Kelvin which made for a hype finale; earning him a much deserved second place finish. Both players have shown with hard work, determination and showing very little emotion that they have what it takes to make it to the top.

I ended up getting fourth place as you can see from the above results which is ok. I ended up losing Kelvin in   a close set (2-1) and got destroyed by Haaris' old-school Ryu gameplay (2-0). Haaris did a weird ambiguous setup on me which made me block the right way and blew up my crouch tech with an EX Tatsu after catching my bad jump-in when I had the lead with j.mp>U1. It got into my head which made me not want to crouch tech in the subsequent rounds and he blew me up with throws which garnered him a 2-0 victory over me. I've beaten him many times in the past, but this was his first time beating me convincingly as well as against Geoffrey's Guy.

Needles to say, I was not pleased.

Now, Socal Regionals in Irvine, CA is coming up two weeks from today. I wanted to attend the past three, but couldn't because of work and lack of funds at the time. Not the case this year thankfully. I'll be attending SoCal Regionals with Khiry "Kurokiba" Crawford, my bud Cisco Resendes and possibly some other people who will room with us.

I've been trying to get in as much practice as I can for this event with the best players here in Norcal. I feel like I have something to prove when I participate in this event since I consider SoCal to have the best players when it comes to fighting games. My goal is to at least make top 32 or top 16 and work from there. I have been trying to get as many sessions and spend time in training mode as much as possible all while working full time at the same time. It's difficult, but hopefully I should do well once SCR rolls around.

And not just me. I want everyone from NorCal who is going to this event to step their game up and do well at this event. We've always had a huge rivalry with SoCal and they are usually the better players. With that being said, I have that we have the stronger player base as of late when it come to both AE 2012 and UMVC3. Let's go and show SoCal we are not free!