UPDATE (10/22/16): Per Mark ‘MarkMan’ Julio, invites to participate in the North American Tekken 7 qualifier are no longer being considered. All players MUST WIN a tournament to qualify.
SoCal Regionals in Santa Clara, CA just wrapped up the Tekken 7: Fated Retribution tournament and it was intense the whole event. There were lots of great performances and hype moments, and upsets as well. As well, a lot of information concerning nationals was revealed. Let’s get into it.
No-one qualified for nationals
The biggest upset of all was the fact that no-one qualified for the 2016 North America King of the Iron Fist Tournament finals next month. Secret|Poongko of Korea entered the tournament using Akuma and totally wreaked havoc, which is fine. But apparently no-one knew that the rules had changed. Unlike Final Round 19, where Anakin got 2nd place and still qualified for nationals, at SCR you had to win the tournament in order to qualify.
According to MarkMan, this rule was changed.
Is MYK really not getting a spot for being the highest placing American when Anakin got one at FR for being the highest placing American?
During the stream of SoCal Regionals it was twice discussed that invites could be made to one or more players to attend the North America finals. What this potentially means is that those invited would be able to compete in nationals without having to win a tournament. These individuals would determined as having already been qualified in their own right, meaning they’ve proven themselves in a sense – possibly winning a previous major tournament.
Mark ‘MarkMan’ Julio and Reepal ‘Rip’ Pharboo discuss this in the video below.
Hoa ‘Anakin’ Luu and Rip discuss it further in the video below.
Should this happen, how this will be viewed in light of MYK not being able to qualify will be very interesting.
Last Chance Qualifiers
This was reported in a previous article, but since this is a complete recap it’ll get mentioned now as well. Here’s how last chance qualifiers will work.
According to MarkMan, the last chance qualifiers will be a consecutive series of single-elimination tournaments, and however many LCQ spots are available are the number of tournaments that will be run that day. For example, there are currently seven (7) LCQ spots available. That means there would be seven tournaments ran that day.
Possibly the best thing about the LCQ’s are that a person can enter multiple times, no matter how many times they’ve lost. However many tournaments there are, that’s how many chances a player has to enter and win. Using the same example, even if a player were to enter all seven tournaments and lose the first six, if they win the seventh one, they qualify for the finals the next day.
There will NOT be a top 8 that qualifies for the finals. Only one person will win and advance from each tournament. Again, all of those who lost may enter any remaining LCQ tournaments until all spots are filled.
You can hear MarkMan explain it below. The video should start at 1:53:50.
Since no America won SoCal Regionals, there are now 8 spots available for LCQ on Tuesday, November 8th.
SoCal Regionals Final Results
Grand finals featured him (in losers) against MYK (in winners) using Steve Fox. The first set was 3-1 in favor of Poongko, but it was the second set which displayed exactly why Akuma needed to be nerfed. Poongko literally man-handled MYK three matches straight. It was sad to see because MYK had no answer for him. He had done well during the entire tournament, but once he reached grand finals – completely different story.
For the record, the version of Tekken 7FR being used was version B, which is the version before Akuma got nerfed. In all fairness, it’s the same version that has been used during the Tekken Tour since EVO.
Aziz Peregrino-Brimah aka Zee the CEO | Founder / Editor-in-chief of TekkenGamer | Gaming has been a passion of Zee's since the early days of Atari and ColecoVision. His first experience with Tekken was in the early 90's, and it was Tekken 3 that sealed the deal. True story... As a teenager Zee once received his Winn-Dixie paycheck and spent it all at the arcade the same day. Needless to say, his mother wasn't pleased.
