In this interview the sweden player DRz.Skatan talks about the Canada Cup 2011.
The Canada Cup was about a week ago. What did you think of this event?
It was a great event; there were a tonne of really strong players from all over the world attending, so it was a good chance for me to play against and learn from people that I don’t usually have access to. The tournaments were pretty timely and there was much more hype than what you usually have at a european tournament.
Even though my results weren’t the best I still consider this to be one of the most fun events I’ve been to!
What did you think of your performance in the solo tournament and the European teams during the team tournament?
When it comes to the singles tournament I felt like the draw I got wasn’t perhaps the best; I had to play against Bonchan in groups then when I got out of brackets my first match was against Tokido, haha!
But that was kind of expected since there were so many good players at the event, it was very unusal for someone to not end up against a really strong player after they got out of groups. I feel like with the level I’m at I could have made it into anything between top 8 and top 32 depending on how the seeding turned out.
One thing this tournament did do though was give me a newborn fire to want to improve at the game, so I’ve figured out some new things in training mode since then that I will try to use at the next tournament!
During this competition, what player impressed you the most ?
Hmm, there were really a lot of talented players there like Mago, Tokido, Bonchan, Wolfkrone, Ryan Hart, Luffy, Kazunoko, MOV etc. so it’s hard to say who really impressed me the most. Based on just the tournament matches there at Canada Cup I would have to say that Wolfkrone and Ryan Hart made the biggest impact on me.
Wolfkrone for how well he played against Team Japan in the team tournament. Ryan because of how well he played against Kazunoko in the singles tournament, that match was great to watch and I honestly feel like Ryan should have won it. Also Cuongster really impressed me in his match against Leslie‘s Sagat, he managed to pull of some really clutch confirms with st.hp x super there, and just overall I feel like he has improved so much at this game in the last year.
Of course the japanese were impressive, but at the same time it’s hard to get impressed that much by players that you watch often and you know what level they’re at. But at the same time it would be difficult for them to play in such a way that the match became memorable, if you understand what I mean.
The level was very high and there were some epic matches during these two days. If there was a match to remember, which would you choose?
Hmm, since I already mentioned a few matches I guess I will pick another one. The money match between Evans and Mike Ross was pretty memorable since it was so even and both of them had to pull out some unpredictable tactics to stay on even ground. So it was very entertaining to watch that ft5 set, I don’t think anyone recorded it though. Evans won in the end though, congratulations to him!
Do you have an anecdote or a story which has occurred during your stay to tell us?
Well, there is one thing concering a certain money match and people not wanting to pay up. But I don’t think I’m the right person to talk about that since I wasn’t one of the players in that money match. But all I can say is, when you play a money match, don’t pretend like you don’t know you have to pay afterwards.
What are the next tournament that you are planning to do?
I will be going to Dreamhack Winter next weekend November 25-27, which will be fun. The week after that I will be going to FFM Rumble in Frankfurt. Then I will probably be taking a break from tournaments for a short while until WGC next year since I’ve been traveling much more than I’m used to these past 3 months. But I’m really looking forward to the 2012 patch so I will spend time looking into what characters are interesting to use in that version!
Do you plan to play some fighting games competitively besides SSF4AE ?
Right now the only fighting game I am playing competetively is AE, but before that I have played Dead or Alive 4, ST, Virtua Fighter 5, the Soul Calibur-series and BlazBlue.
A free word to conclude this interview?
I just want to say that hitcombo.net is a really good idea to bring the european scene together in one place. I’ve been visiting the french version for quite some time but now that you’re putting out an english version I think that we could have some very interesting times ahead of us!
crédit photo : Roseangeliphotography
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