The highly stacked Brooklyn Beatdown Street Fighter V tournament at ESL One just saw a major upset, and it's of Disney Channel original movie-like proportions.
Evolution 2016 champion Lee "Infiltration" Seon-Woo lost 0-2 against Sons of Asgard's Thomas "Brolynho" Proença in the top 32 winners' bracket.
Brolynho takes the series in a dominating fashion from @infiltration85!https://t.co/JzLkSLgFD8 #TBB pic.twitter.com/RnQQtfgsUF
- ESL Street Fighter (@ESLSF) October 1, 2016
The crowd went absolutely wild as the reigning World Champion succumbed to the unknown Brazilian.
ESPN caught up with Brolynho after his win to get his take on what happened.
Brolynho is a geophysicist from Rio de Janeiro, and even he had trouble putting into words what he had accomplished.
"I didn't expect it," Brolynho said. "This is my first time in New York. This is my first time in North America."
Using a combination of matchup knowledge, impeccable spacing and timing, Brolynho coerced Infiltration into playing his game rather than the other way around. "I tried to control him in the large range or very close to him because [in the] middle range it's very good for [Infiltration's character] Nash."
It was far from a cakewalk for Brolynho. Infiltration can adapt very quickly.
"He did that actually in the second game," Brolynho said. "[But then] I tried to be as fast as him. It worked."
Brolynho was able to use his understanding of the Nash matchup to carve out a workable strategy.
"Against [my character] Necalli, it's hard to throw fireballs, and it's hard to get close to Necalli" because of his solid light punch, he said. "So, I tried to control him using my V-Skill and avoid him [throwing] fireballs against me.
"Infiltration understood how I was using my V-Skill, and was starting to be in a range to where my V-Skill doesn't reach him. But the problem on that is that he would go to the corner too fast because the V-Skill could be in any place that I want to use [it]."
Because Infiltration was backing himself into a corner to avoid Brolynho's V-Skill, the tactic worked to the Brazilian's advantage.
Brolynho doesn't believe that Infiltration was playing lightly or underestimating him; rather, he thinks Infiltration was having trouble adapting. "In these games, it's hard to change too much [in] your game in just two matchups or three matchups," Brolynho said.
Brolynho conceded that the match could have gone the other way in a best-of-five. Even after his momentous win, Brolynho believes we should "never doubt Infiltration."