watch the streams!

As we roll into August…

We roll into the first week of Summer Slash V! Lone Wolf Base grabbed the reins to hold their first tournament ever and they could not have asked for a better turn out for the first of two weeks! Like much of Lone Wolf’s reputation for show, the first week of competition brought in some stand-out fighters from Southern California.

Jose Ortiz-Miranda comes in, fresh, from being a referee at the Summer Slash IV! Wolf Veterans Hikaru Hayakawa and Dustin Speratos showed up to fight on some home turf. Lightspeed Irvine’s Walter Simbol, Rob Chan and Jeremiah Rodriguez come down to bolster their new rankings from Summer Slash IV. Tzitziri Rodriguez has made her second, fill-in appearance, as Priscella Haile had to unfortunately drop out due to sickness. Last, but certainly, not least, Daniel Lane, a renowned combatant, from the ranks of The Saber Legion, has graced us with his first ever Lightspeed appearance!

The goal of the night was to have a massive, eight-person, round-robin for ranking within the league. This meant a total of twenty-eight fights, which is the biggest group of round-robin fighting seen in a single Lightspeed pool.

To start us out, we pit Wolf versus Wolf, with Hikaru Hayakawa taking on teammate, and fellow base officer, Dustin Speratos. Dustin has not fought competitively since December ‘19, and so this was a great first match for him to shake any cobwebs off. The fight started off slow, with single points going both ways. Speratos took a solid lead. With seven seconds left on the time clock, Hayakawa was behind 5 - 6, and after a few missed exchanges, on both ends, Hiyakawa came in with a deep snipe to the hand of Speratos milliseconds before the buzzer, to take the match from Speratos. This was his closest match of the night.

Priscilla Haile was set to fight for week 1. Unfortunately, she was feeling under-the-weather and had to drop out the morning of. Luckily, Tzitziri Rodriguez happened to be attending, originally as a spectator, and made a magnificent, last second substitute! Rodriguez had a much more seasoned fighter pool this time around, but she definitely pulled out the stops. Scoring two three-point returns in her fight versus Speratos, with the second return putting the nail-in-the-coffin and sealing her first and only win of the night with a score of nine to four!

Newly C-Ranked fighter, Walter Simbol loaded up after his fantastic performance at Summer Slash IV. Claiming decisive wins over Speratos, Lane and T. Rodriguez, Simbol was on track to claim top four for the night. With sudden death losses to Hiyakawa and Jose Ortiz-Miranda, Simbol had an uphill battle. Unfortunately, he was shut down by SS4 winner Rob Chan and SS4 third-place winner, Jeremiah Rodriguez.

Before we get into the “Top 4” for the night, we would like to recognize Summer Slash IV’s champion, Rob Chan, who made it out for the night, completing six of his seven matches, with a minor hand injury! He cleaned up most of the competition, with the only competitor to come close, Hayakawa, making it halfway there, at five to eight. Unfortunately, due to personal time constraints, he had to leave early, and therefore bowed out of the competition, just one match away from his final bout. 

Now to our Top 4! Daniel Lane made his Lightspeed Saber debut! The famous “Jedi Wookie” brought a very interesting mix of combat styles to the league! Being a much more tactical fighter, he had many great exchanges with Ortiz-Miranda, Speratos and Simbol that led into stalemates. One such extended exchange was versus Hayakawa, where neither fighter scored a point until 44 seconds into the match! Lane also brought us some amazing flow and technique demonstrations during our intermissions and we hope to continue seeing him within the League in the future. Lane placed fourth overall.

Having been one of the two referees of Summer Slash IV, Jose Ortiz-Miranda was looking for blood! He brought the heat, by performing some of the more unique and oddly questionable techniques to the ring, along with some victory dancing. Ortiz-Miranda brought out some fun, and functional, moves, such as “The Statue of Liberty”, “Golfing” and some iaido quick-draws! Going into the advanced bracket, “Fight for Third” match, he faced off against Lane. In the pools, Lane showed a dominant lead, taking the match eight to five. Ortiz-Miranda, showing a second wind, and an eye for vengeance came out swinging, and cleaned up the match, eight to three and clinching 3rd place for the evening!

Cadet Jeremiah Rodriguez is still riding high, after his dominating performance in Summer Slash IV. Having earned the rank of B, it put him amongst the best of the League, but also put a big target on his back. When Jeremiah shows up, he shows up, completely shutting out three of his six fights; ten to zero, eight to zero and eight to zero. His use of defensive returns to catch up when behind is nothing short of astonishing. Jeremiah finished up the pools, short one fight due to Chan’s withdrawal, but going to the Advanced brackets in 2nd place.

Lone Wolf’s very own Hikaru Hayakawa had something to prove last weekend. After only winning two matches in his pool during SS4, Hayakawa stepped up with a chip on his shoulder and home-turf pride! Sporting a brand new curved-hilt (and only one entered into the tournament), Three of his seven matches went to sudden death overtime, with Simbol; winning seven to eight, J. Rodriguez; winning seven to nine, and Lane; losing six to four. Hayakawa left the pools as the number one contender!

Keeping with the new tradition of going toe to toe, both Hayakawa and Rodriguez, have roughly the same styles and movesets making their grudge match the “anticipated fight of the night”. Hayakawa sought revenge in the pools, and clutched it in sudden death, but had to rematch Rodriguez in the “Final Fight for First”! The Final Fight started off strong as both fighters were meeting each other at every move. Rodriguez scored the first point with an indirect contact. Hayakawa scores next with a clean strike to the top of the hand. After many back and forths, with seemingly mirrored moves, Hayakawa comes in with a flourishing uppercut to the bottom of Rodriguez’s hand. Rodriguez concedes a super soft strike to his arm within the next exchange, which was extremely honorable. This looked to empower him as he came out strong in the next exchange with a massive lunge that Hayakawa looks to evade, but gets hit on the top of the knee. He follows that up with a MASSIVE “catch and return” defensive action, putting the score six to five. 

We then get stuck in a loop of mirror matching and “sloppy” exchanges, as both fighters look to get a lead and close it out. Hayakawa lands a massive hand pick bringing it up, seven to six. With a few more doubled exchanges, we are locked in, seven to six, with four seconds remaining. Rodriguez looks to get a leg pick, but does not land in time, as the buzzer goes off about a half second before his low slash lands to the legs of Hayakawa, leaving Hikaru Hayakawa as your Summer Slash V, Week 1 winner!

With the end of Week 1, we see a rise in ranks in two fighters! Hikaru has been promoted from E rank to D rank. Daniel Lane enters the league at an E rank. Congratulations to both competitors in their placements! We look forward to seeing them advance.

I would like to personally thank everyone who made this happen. A big thank you to Shannon and James, the proprietors of The ComiXLounge, for which we use to fight, every Friday night for practice and for this tournament. Another thank you to Liam Hayakawa, Rico Thompson and Fonzie Ramirez for putting in the extra work for this tournament and learning how to be exemplary referees. Thank you to Cang Snow and Jessica Hui for being commentators for the official stream. Thank you to friends and family, who showed up to cheer on all of the fighters and help with set up and take down. Without them, we would not have the support system that makes this whole community run and grow!
And of course, a big thank you to Supreme Leader Cang Snow, without him this league would not exist.

We look forward to another great turn out with Week 2, this Sunday, 7pm at the ComiXLounge in Escondido!

MTFBWYA

Andre “Moose” Gonzalez
Cpt. Lone Wolf Base

DIRECTOR

Andre Gonzales

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

Cang Snow

REFEREES

Liam Hayakawa
Rico Thompson
Alfonso Ramirez

STREAMERS

Cang Snow
Jessica Hui

SETUP

Walter Simbol
Liam Hayakawa
Rico Thompson

COMPETITORS

Walter Simbol
Jeremiah Rodriguez
Rob Chan
Hikaru Hayakawa
Jose Ortiz-Miranda
Daniel Lane
Tzitziri Rodriguez
Dustin Speratos

SPONSOR

Starbucks Escondido Signature Pavilion

SPECIAL THANKS TO

The ComixLounge