Hilarious bloopers don't just happen in professional sports like football, basketball and baseball. They can also happen in pro gaming, and the sting of humiliation is just as sharp and deep as dropping a sports ball in the, uh, field zone at that key moment in the, um (what's it called?) quadrant.
The Evolution Championship Series, better known as EVO, took place at Bally's Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino over the weekend featuring some of the best and most famous players of fighting games from around the world. The most embarrassing moment of the tournament happened when one of the competitors stood up too early to celebrate a win that cost him a shot at the title.
Pro gamers Woshige and Ogawa (in this world, many players go by single names only) squared off in the game Guilty Gear Xrd SIGN as part of the winners' semifinals bracket. Woshige scored his first knockout, or "slash" as it's called in the game, and he jumped up to do his victory dance. The problem is that he needed two wins to take the bracket, giving Ogawa the perfect window to wail on Woshige's fighter and ensure himself an easy path to victory.
Ogawa went on to win the Guilty Gear Xrd title while Woshige had to settle for a third-place finish, according to Event Hubs.
The tournament was also being broadcast on the Internet and a clip of the embarrassing moment found its way to YouTube so the rest of the world could bathe in the hilarious joy of watching this humiliating defeat. Technically, that makes all of us winners.