Collision 2022 marks the start of a new Panda Global Ranking season for Smash Ultimate (PGRU), which hasn’t been active since the start of the pandemic. This led to one of the most stacked North American majors in Ultimate’s history. Since the start of the year, we’ve seen many rising stars like Quidd and Zomba. We’ve also seen a new level of dominance from players like Light and Cosmos. And who can forget the top 3 players from last year, MkLeo, Spargo, and Tweek. All of these players were in attendance as well as nearly every heavy hitter in North America. Gluttony was also in attendance, hot off of his amazing performance at Summit 4 last week.
With all of these players in attendance, we were bound to see some upsets and Collisions delivered. The biggest upset was probably Cosmos losing the Shadic, the Corrin main, and Peanut, the Little Mac. Cosmos won one of the 4 majors this year (Glitch Infinite) but got 33rd this weekend, getting drastically lower than his seed.
The other big upset seems tiny if you don’t know the history behind it. MkLeo got 3rd, losing to Spargo in an intense reverse 3-0, and losing 1-3 to Tweek as well in losers finals. Leo lost to the 2nd and 3rd best players from last year, but considering the dominance Leo had over both of them, adding another loss to Spargo and a new loss to Tweek is much more important than it might seem at first glance.
After his performance at Summit last week, Tweek had something to prove at Collision. He dominated. He only lost sets to Spargo, and even took one in grand finals 3-0 to reset the bracket. While he didn’t bring it home in the reset, he still showed that he was performing at his A-game. With wins over Light (who he lost to last week), Glutonny, and MkLeo he’s starting off the new PGRU season strong and only one other player is looking better.
Spargo is looking like the new King. I said it in my piece last week about Summit, but this could be the new era of SparGOAT. Hot off his win at Summit, he added another major to his record. Aside from losing a set to Tweek in grand finals, Spargo looked unstoppable. Spargo’s Cloud is nutty and in his set with Leo in winner’s finals, we saw him come back from the jaws of defeat in game 3, winning the game and turning that momentum into a reverse 3-0. Reverse 3-0ing the king of reverse 3-0s is a huge deal and Spargo might be taking over the title of reverse 3-0 king as well as the title for king of Smash Ultimate if he can keep up this level of performance.
Now that we have the first event for the PGRU in the books, there’s only one clear front-runner… because there’s only been one tourney. Spargo is starting off the season strong and while Smash Summit 4 doesn’t count towards the PGRU season, it does help show a pattern of Spargo’s dominance. If he keeps this up, he’ll be the clear number 1 in the world. There are many more tournaments this season so we’ll have many more opportunities to see players prove themselves, but Spargo is starting off the season ahead and is currently the man to beat.
Bernard Lamar Rice 