Most fighting game tournaments try not to curate tournament matchups. Sure, the largest events will do some tampering to ensure that big names and rivals don’t play against each other right off the bat, but most of the time, contestants meed to be ready for whoever they will be facing. Tsuyoshi, a 9-year-old Dragon Ball FighterZ player managed to find himself in a unique challenge when he had to face his own father in a recent tournament.
Tsuyoshi is a regular at the weekly Dragon Ball FighterZ tournaments hosted by the Fighting Tuesday event series in Tokyo, Japan. He is very skilled despite his young age. Tsuyoshi faced his fair share of high-level players, including two matches against Evo finalist Naoki “moke” Nakayama . And event though he isn’t always successful, Tsuyoshi has continued to participate in Fighting Tuesday week after week, receiving encouragement from his father no matter the outcome of his matches.
This week’s Fighting Tuesday was a little different. In order to help newcomers gain more tournament experience, the organizers restricted competition to beginner and intermediate players. Tsuyoshi obviously made the cut, but so did a surprise challenger: his father, who goes by the name Wasa. While his usual role is supporting his son, Wasa is also a competitor himself, so he entered the same Dragon Ball FighterZ bracket with his eye on the prize. It was always possible the father and son would end up playing each other in tournament at some point, but the luck of the draw made them opponents in the very first round.
What ensued was a pretty standard Dragon Ball FighterZ match, with both Tsuyoshi and Wasa showing off what they had learned in their training sessions and tournament matches. The skill level wasn’t exactly Evo-level, of course, but the added tension of watching a young kid battle his own dad in competition made it just as exciting. The commentators, Andrew “jiyuna” Fidelis and Majin Obama, were quick to make jokes about the situation, calling attention to the rare sight with moments of endearing amusement. Tsuyoshi ended up with a 2-1 victory over Wasa, and the father-son pair shared a brief, heart-warming moment before walking off-camera.
Screenshot: Bandai Namco Entertainment
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