We'll post full results later. Top-8 was recorded,
Lies, nobody recorded RJ and myself, at least not me hehe =( We tied for 7th place which I'm pleased with the results considering there were 54 participants, and also factoring the ppl that got eliminated (sorry Kunio and Salim ^.^).
---
@DG. I think this is one of those situations that is taken way OUT of context since you were not there. Not one single player, had
anything but MAD respect for Xian, he was incredibly classy and well mannered on top of his skill--which sadly I can say is not the case for most high level players.
Xian participated in SBO'10 as many you remembered last year in Japan, he said when he returned to Singapore the scene completely died for XIII (1 machine left in Singapore) and he has not
touched the game, except maybe once, before playing the
night before of the side tourney. One whole year. He also placed top 32 for MvC3 and AE just to get an idea how versatile of a player he is.
Xian who plays a typical Singapore/HK layout of:
A B C
D
Was unable to configure his buttons on one of our setups, and had to play on a setup 2 which his many opponents refused to play on since they wanted to use American sticks. There were very little we could do there but a coin was tossed, and both parties had to deal with the outcome.
The true controversy comes is not so much the stick situation but with the call with Bala's matches. First and foremost,
I respect Bala's skill as a player, but I personally feel that he needs to work on his class if he wants to ever gain international respect. This is what happened (and I know 4leaf doesnt want me to post this but too bad):
4leaf was playing Bala, and like ReveLAtions, 4leaf started off incredibly strong. In fact, 4leaf was nearly straighting (OCVing) Bala with his Mature
till Bala's last character who had about 30% life when all of a sudden Bala raised his hand saying his buttons had problem. This was on the last round of his last character (4leaf was still on his first), when he was about to get defeated.
Everyone watching was FURIOUS (no joke) that he would even suggest that on the 5th round. The Cali-Mexicans themselves, El Rosa, Mr. KOF, Reynald, Abe and myself were all in agreement that 4leaf should win that round by principle alone The 4 of us judges decided that we'll rule it in 4leaf's favor however, at the last minute 4leaf wanted to reset the game out of
honor, which IMO, Bala should have declined out of good sportsmanship.
We all have played games with less than ideal settings, but true sportmanship and class that allows us to have the judgement to call something like that
after the game. As this was a high profile match everyone was watching, and since many of us discussed this throughout the night, we all noticed that there were no signs of there's-something-wrong-with-my-button-look on his face. Afterwards, Mr KOF jumped on to test the joystick himself, nothing--just to prove a point. In fact, when Bala was testing the button after we "stopped" the match, it looked fine to us everytime he pressed the button.
Then to add insult to injury, Bala grabs the only other Japanese stick (we all know he plays both but more comfortable with the American stick as he refused one whole tourney we had in AA, coz it was on Japanese sticks) making 4leaf playing on the American stick which we don't like playing on.All in all, we're pretty disappointed in Bala, he may have the skill to be a champion but certainly lacks class. I think everyone lost respect for him that day.
EDIT: 4leaf wants to clear up he actually was the one to offer Bala the Japanese stick to Bala, my bad.
