Any news on any new teams?
While SBA was going on and looking through the Twitch list, I found that Dom Rep was having their own tournament and picked up some info.
Quick Analysis:
Their 5th guy was an Abel that can’t make it because he’s in the military and couldn’t get off or something. That was Braulio. Their replacement is EricKOf and he plays Juri. Pretty decent Juri. To compare him, all I can say for now is he was a better Juri then the one @ the SBA stream that almost eliminated Chris G.
Their Akuma player is no joke. I may even dare and go as far as to say he’s in the running of best Akuma outside of Japan and Korea that I’ve seen (and I’ve seen a lot). As the UK guys would word it, he has a very dry style and though I’ve seen him miss some combos before (due to being a pad player I would speculate) he was clean today. He said he really wants to face Infiltration and that’s one of his main goals at Canada Cup. The guy has history with PR Balrog as it seems he was the first to beat Balrog in the original SF4 when Balrog went to their country (at the time he used Ryu). The guy seems like some sort of F.Champ villian due to early videos which he claims he was talking a lot of trash to hype up the scene as the scene was very small in the country. The guy seem very respectable though when speaking towards other teams in Canada Cup. He looks older too. I think they said he’s a husband and a father.
Composition may be a little suspect as a team when you look at characters. They have no Seth. They have no Cammy. They do have an Akuma and Fei Long but also a Guy and Juri with Ryu in the middle. Skill wise I think they’re on the top half of the teams.
Potential match up for Team Canada:
Canada vs DR: I would put DR as favorites here. Though Chi-Rithy is the best player on the team, Lap Chi would be the MVP here if he can avoid their Fei Long as I saw this team in particular seems to be weak against Blanka. Though their Akuma is their best player, their Fei Long seems to be the backbone in many of their match ups.
(By the way their fei long is the guy that eliminated Wong and Gamerbee in Evo2K11)
So though this team isn’t confirmed hope they really do get confirmed! All of them since their team will be drastically weaker if they don’t all get their Visas. They already took a loss with their 5th best (Abel) but I think their Juri fits the team’s niche enough and seems to be skilled enough to pick up some of the pieces.
I wonder about China! Will there be a coalition of China, Taiwan and Hong Kong? That sounds deadly! I still think it would be neat if it’s just a pure mainland Chinese team as they have enough talented players there from the most recent videos I saw of their SBO qualifiers!
Any chance of a Team Canada #2? I mean I don’t think anyone would really fault Canada for having two teams as they are the host country. In terms of quality I can see how some may question it a lot more than 2 Japanese or 2 USA teams. I know AU is a potential team but I have a hard time erasing the memory of the horrible OCV they suffered in the hands of Negromat (Guy) in the AU vs. America (Wednesday Night Fight players). But maybe after Shadowloo Showdown they’ve been practicing harder! Team Brasil seems like a bigger threat than AU but again Tokido and Gamerbee had their way with them recently. At least with Team Canada and Team Dom. Rep. they faced off against big names and have had success so you can see the potential of the win! Still really hope France can make it out along with BR, AU, Switzerland, Singapore, China, another Japanese among others.