Pokémon World Championships

Somebody who's always just been, oh, yeah, okay, the Pokemon Unite seems like it's doing good.

The Pokemon MOBA that's always at Pokemon Worlds, I just

assumed this would go on forever.

Yeah.

I'll go to a couple more.

I'll probably chase a Worlds invite, which I was not going to do before.

Yeah, I mean, nothing crazy, but it will be a bigger part of my life than it was probably going to be.

Unfortunately, Indy doesn't have its regionals back this year, right? So yeah, a little tougher for you.

It's actually been kind of the opposite.

I've had a lot of times where I do really well when the pressure is on me.

Like last NAIC, or 2025 NAIC, I needed to get top 32 to get my Worlds invite, and I got 29.

The whole time I was stressing, I'm like, I want to go so bad.

ever happened for Ben in this tournament where he goes Petrat early, stalling out the monkey dories or whatever, and then goes Watchtower, Zam, boom, boom, boom, boom.

The fact that there's also room for three Crushing Hammer in this, although it's, like I said, it's pretty similar to, like, the idea of what Henry played at Worlds, and he had Dust Norrs.

Oh, he didn't have Crushing Hammers.

How is there room for three Crushing Hammers in here? It's so tilting that Dragapult can just play whatever they want and be so good.

Obviously, Pablo has been a top player for a long time.

He still competes.

I mean, as far as I'm aware, I think he got his Worlds invite last year still.

Then Marco has actually been one of the top players in the game, especially from the Latin American region, and seeing him stepping into that role with the casting thing is super dope to see for sure.

So that is something to look forward to.

As for this year, it might be hit or miss with... holidays and All that going on but I I did want to recap Worlds since I was able to attend Worlds and thank you again Zimmykid for the invite and allowing me to be your plus one that was very kind of you and you know I'm very thankful for the opportunity to attend Worlds in San Francisco and the XP event and being able to go to the Chase Arena to view the finals for pokemon uh for the pokemon world's competition so with that being said just to kind of recap on what's happened i guess we can go chronologically it'd probably be the best way to go um will be better i keep telling myself and be better i i will make an effort today to post some photos uh from worlds um and it kind of kind of kind of

what is it to be uh i

had the word on seven my tongue

not thinking of uh it's animal crossing so there's quite a few things to to look at and pick up right um luckily i was able to pick up the uh the game boy advance uh emulator with the uh different roms to have the different uh soundtracks from red and blue so that was really cool get um i love listening to it i

have to take it out again and listen and

playing through all the wrongs because i didn't listen to all of them yet and then take out the battery because i never know when i'm going to use it again and i don't want the battery to you know get all corrosive so trying to keep that pristine Got to see the entrance to Pokemon Worlds before they opened, which was really nice.

I didn't go in, but I was looking from the outside in, right? I saw the people working on putting up

It is interesting.

I think it does help though for like the international market because when you're competing and everyone's in one place, like at Pokemon Worlds, you can also look at that and be like, oh, that's V-Star.

Like I don't have to look at that and be like, what is that tie symbol? Oh, that's the tie symbol for V-Star.

Yeah.

which i think that is valid that might be especially hard so

yeah like i i don't see a world where you beat alakazam but alakazam seems to be on a downtrend we look at the overall metagame If we look at the overall metagame, Alakazam was definitely trending up after Worlds.

It had a couple of high finishes at Worlds, and it was in a solid spot.

And then it's just kind of...

Look at how far it's fallen.

Raises a question of whether or not you should go first or second because you're not actually playing a way to get into the Celebi.

I think there are some ways you could make the Hydrapple have a little bit better Dragapult matchup.

Like I've thought about, I was at an event with Sebastian Lashman and he showed me his Hydrapple list before Worlds and he had an ice cream, a jumbo ice cream.

I think the conversation that we had was just incredible surrounding his approach to the game, the differences between him and his world champion brother, Fernando, and his And just the way he thinks about the game, I think, is so unique and different from other players.

And so when he top 32'd Worlds and then top 4'd Recife and is playing the Zoroark deck that all these top players that had played it for the past year are seeming to abandon, I really wanted to get him on just to talk more about the deck that he is stuck with despite so much adversity and so much online criticism and so many struggles at other major tournaments.

Now, before I kick it over to the actual interview itself, I will say you can click a follow button up at the top.

It's one button.

Any big life changes for you? Anything new going on?

Yeah, not really.

Like, since we last talked, well, of course, I make, like, Theta32 at Worlds, Theta4 at Recife, like you said, but apart from that, everything's been, like, the same.

Just now that I made Theta4 at Recife, I may actually consider going to more events that I had initially planned.