How T1 MkLeo won Genesis 8: Ultimate tournament

Genesis 8 took place in San Jose, California, on April 15-17. This tournament was originally going to be played in January 2022 but it had to be postponed due to safety concerns regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. The tournament featured a $29,385 prize pool and some of the world’s best Smash Brothers Ultimate players like Gluttony, Sparg0, Marss, Chag, Light, and the tournament champion, MkLeo, also known as the best all-time best SSBU player.

The Genesis series of tournaments are organized by DBR and it goes beyond the Ultimate title in the SSB saga, it also features the 64 and Melee titles. The last Genesis tournament was the 7th iteration of the competition and it was held more than 2 years ago, in January 2020. The last winner of the Ultimate division was Marss, who 3-0’d MkLeo in the finals.

This year the fun started in the Singles Bracket, where as usual, most of it featured American and Mexican players. Both MkLeo and Marss were placed in the winners bracket from the very beginning, giving us hope for a rematch in the later stages of the tournament. MkLeo had an easy time against every single one of his opponents in the winners bracket. Marss managed to win his two first matches but ended up losing the set against Sparg0 in the third round of the winners bracket, meaning he had to continue his journey in the losers bracket.

During his winners bracket run, MkLeo took down Gluttony and Light, two of the strongest players in the tournament, while Marss was actually struggling and ended up getting knocked out of the tournament by Myran in the losers bracket semifinals. The Genesis 7 grand finals wouldn’t be repeated this time but the tournament was far from being over for MkLeo.

On the last day of the tournament, in the final singles bracket, MkLeo faced Sparg0, his fellow Mexican Cloud player. The match turned out to be the closest MkLeo was to being knocked out of the tournament, it was a very back-and-forth series that could’ve gone to Sparg0 but ultimately ended up going in MkLeo’s favor. This series made everyone expect that Sparg0 would go on to beat Glutonny in his next match and the grand finals would be a rematch against MkLeo but this wasn’t the case. Gluttony beat Sparg0 3-1 and advanced to the grand finals to face MKLeo.

The grand finals match was a bit underwhelming, and even if 2 of the 3 games were very close and MkLeo almost end up dropping those, he ultimately swept Gluttony 3-0 and had a record of 12 wins and 0 defeats, winning every single one of his sets. This tournament didn’t have the biggest grand finals but it was still a good opportunity for MkLeo to prove that he remains the absolute best Super Smash Bros. Ultimate player in the world.