The Super Smash Bros. for Wii U "player sagas" continue in Las Vegas with 2GGT: ZeRo Saga on December 16-18. For over a year, the 2GGaming events team have coordinated player-themed events for personalities and players. For the ZeRo Saga, featuring dominant Smash 4 champion Gonzalo "ZeRo" Barrios of Team SoloMid, they are going all out. There's a generous $10,000 pot bonus given by Collegiate Colosseum, an all-star tournament staff with the core 2GGaming squad of Champ Tangwongkitsiri, James "Jmex" Chacon, Las Vegas' Bassem "Bear" Dahdouh (a core Smash Wii U staff member from top events like Genesis and Evo) and an army of top level players.
For ZeRo, the star of the show, the year so far has been full of ups and downs. He started with an incredible win at Genesis 3 in January and continued his tournament win streak into the end of February. He decided to take an extended break shortly after. By then, he was undisputedly number one, winning 64 out of 65 tournaments in a 16-month stretch.
Returning to the scene did not pan out immediately for ZeRo. He reached a low point in his Smash WiiU career with a ninth place at CEO 2016, a third place at Evo 2016, and a thirteenth place at Super Smash Con 2016. But the end of the summer became the turning point for ZeRo as he refined his game. Although it hasn't been a perfect comeback, a big win in August at Shine 2016 proved he was back.
Since then, ZeRo's been unstoppable, currently carrying a four-tournament win streak, which also includes The Big House 6 and UGC Smash Open. With a strong second half of the year, he likely earns himself the number one slot on the Panda Global Rankings version 2 for the first half of 2017. It seems like a given that he would win his own 2GG Saga.
However, there is a running joke that the highlighted players are "cursed" at their own tournaments. In the series' nine events to date, no one has been able to win their own Saga. About half have finished in the top four, but even players like Luminosity's Yuta "Abadango" Kawamura couldn't crack their Sagas' top 10.
ZeRo Saga in particular will be a serious challenge for the champion. The Panda Global Rankings (PGR) system is classifying this as the last tier 1 event for 2016, an unusual decision given the relatively small number of competitors.
"With the advent of pot bonuses, Top Players have coordinated themselves to attend these events in hopes of reaping the prize. The bigger the prize, the more intense the competition," explained Luis "suar" Suarez, Panda Global's PGstats Director for Smash Wii U. "[December's UGC Smash Open] is regarded as a tier 1 event [because of its large pot bonus and the talent pool it attracted]. Due to the fact that 2GG's ZeRo Saga boasts more entrants than UGC and a larger top Player talent pool, it also receives the Tier 1 designation despite not having at least 512 entrants (to date)."
ZeRo has accomplished many things in his career, but will he be the first to win his own Saga?