Another season is over. With that said there’s something that I need to say, and feel that everyone has a right to know.
For most of the season the pot was short, I had some pressing financial issues with myself and my family, and dipped into the pot to help them out. I was able to get ahold of the cash through a good friend and have the pot be available tonight for the playoffs/finals. I could’ve just bothered to not say anything and sweep this under the carpet, and not really had anyone know about this dilemma. But to everyone in the scene that has looked at me as a leader, and more importantly as a friend I felt that it would be wrong to further deceive everyone. It was really hard to see posts like Mikhail’s where he was saying that he trusted me. Seeing posts like those, and some of the PM’s that I got during the week, I’m not going to lie, it made me cry. Here I am looked upon as some sort of pillar to the scene, and yet I fucked up and did this to you guys, I had a hard time sleeping, wasn’t really eating, it was litterally tearing me apart. This is also why I’m posting this up and letting you guys know this, I need to come clean and face whatever backlash from you guys. I fucked up, and was going to do whatever I could to fix this wrong. Like I said someone came through for me, and it’s not really important as to who did, but in reality I didn’t really fix anything. So this is my attempt to try and fix what I’ve broken. With that said, I hope you guys find it in your hearts to try and understand that I wasn’t in no way going into TW’s to try and deceive and swindle those that are close to me. I made some very poor decisions from my end, and am willing to face the penalties.
With that said, I am officially retiring TournamentWars. I feel that with this season and all the setbacks, and struggles of what I’ve called this season as a Royal clusterfuck, I was just too emotionally involved, and was being too stubborn in trying to finish what I’ve started. From the amount of heat I got after Best Western yanked us out of the venue that we all loved. To desperately trying to find a replacement venue and to keep everything on schedule, to trying to continue to have NWM’s 3, only to have to cancel it entirely, to the sponsors that I was trying to get together and just couldn’t get it together in the end, all this and the issue with the pot was too much for me. Comparing season 2 to season 1 is like comparing night and day, and I feel that I’ve really failed in trying to have an event where people can be competitive, and to level up.
It’s almost been a year since I came up with the idea to run a 3v3 SFIV season with a playoffs and a champion. I learned a lot when it comes to being a leader in the scene, I saw the fruits of my labor, and I saw said fruits spoil right before my eyes. I spent nearly every saturday since season 1 started dedicating 8-10 hours each Saturday for the scene. I saw my game slip since I was focusing on trying to keep the scene going, slowly changing from a competitior, to a leader. There’s really not a way to balance the two (well maybe there is but it’s pretty damn hard). I think the biggest thing that I learned was, trying to do something like this is damn near impossible to do by yourself, and the worst part about it is lots of people extended a hand in helping out, and I was too stubborn to accept a lot of the help that was being offered. I do want to extend a thank you to Robert, for taking charge of the website, to Lee for getting the website set up, to Jeff in Season 1 for providing the video equipment and the stuff for commentary, To MHC’s for running the ranbats during the off season (especially on my birthday), and to bring up the mystery game tournament idea and running it. To Cole, BowflexMike, KKF, and Miss Stephanie for letting me use their place as a place to finish everything up for this season, to Danny for opening up my eyes about streaming, and to go out of his way to provide an excellent stream on the few times for TW’s as well as for the grill fights, and most importantly to all of you guys that stuck through all of my bullshit. I’m sorry that I couldn’t provide a season that was as special and spectacular as Season 1, but I guess that’s how the dice fall sometimes.
So again I apologize for how this season turned out in all aspects. If someone wants to try and take it over, by all means. Right now I am in the same boat as Deezo, and have a lot of real life stuff that I need to take care of so SF and being a leader to the scene has to take back seat. I’ve already seen people talk about Season 3, I hope down the road that it might be a possibility, but if that were to happen it wouldn’t be called TouranmentWars, and I’d have to start from the ground up (that is if I would even be considered to run it or to be a part of it), with the first action being to get a group of people on board.
