After some major upsets and a few voting "spirit bombs," we now know which six players will be attending Smash Summit Spring 2017 along with the invited 10.
The first round of voting saw Selfless' Hugo "HugS" Gonzalez and Hyperbolic Time Chamber's Jason "Infinite Numbers" Gauthier make it in. HugS made a strong campaign on his Twitch stream, and Infinite Numbers had the support of the New England Smash scene. Infinite Number's nomination echoed last year's Smash Summit 3 in which Hyperbolic Time Chamber's James "Mafia" Lauerman made it in mostly with the support of the New England region.
The second round of voting saw Tempo Storm's Johnny "S2J" Kim and Selfless' Joey "Lucky" Aldama win tickets to Smash Summit. Both are longstanding members of the SoCal Smash scene and have dedicated fan bases.
The last round of voting was highly contentious with Luminosity Gaming's Mustafa "Ice" Akcakaya, Video Game Boot Camp's Daniel "ChuDat" Rodriguez, Immortals' DaJuan "Shroomed" McDaniel, and Melee It On Me's David "KirbyKaze" MacDonald fighting it out.
Ice has had consistent performances in 2016, Shroomed was the only top-10 player not to be given an automatic invite, ChuDat had been proving himself to be the most threatening Ice Climbers main in the world, and KirbyKaze had the support of Canada.
But at the end of the last round of voting, it was ChuDat and Ice who made it through.
Of the eliminated players, the exclusion of Misfits' Ryan "The Moon" Coker-Welch from Smash Summit was the most surprising. He narrowly made it into Smash Summit 3 last year, but at the event he quickly became the highlight personality. Fans loved him on the commentary couch, and many of his quotes have become staples of the Smash community. There was also a strong push for Alliance's Andreas "Android" Lindgren, younger brother to Armada, to make it in. While early on he was doing well, his momentum quickly waned.
Smash Summit Spring 2017 is set to take place March 2-5 in Los Angeles, California.
The list of players attending is as follows:
Alliance's Adam "Armada" Lindgren
Cloud9's Joseph "Mang0" Marquez
Echo Fox's Jason "Mew2King" Zimmerman
Team Liquid's Juan "Hungrybox" Debiedma
Panda Global's Justin "Plup" McGrath
Team SoloMid's William "Leffen" Hjelte
Tempo Storm's Jeffrey "Axe" Williamson
Counter Logic Gaming's Zachary "SFAT" Cordoni
Counter Logic Gaming's Kevin "PewPewU" Toy
G2 Esports' Weston "Westballz" Dennis
Selfless' Hugo "HugS" Gonzalez
Hyperbolic Time Chamber's Jason "Infinite Numbers" Gauthier
Tempo Storm's Johnny "S2J" Kim
Selfless' Joey "Lucky" Aldama
Video Game Boot Camp's Daniel "ChuDat" Rodriguez
Luminosity Gaming's Mustafa "Ice" Akcakaya