On October 29th, The Lone Wolves hosted a “Spooky Season Spectacular”, featuring several competitive veterans, a rookie, a OG saberist and one brand new competitor!
Coming in fresh off earning his C rank at the Swords and Sabers tournament, John Mullins of Irvine Knights joined us, helping add to the tournament rating, but looking to be the gatekeeper of C rank. Teammate, Dinah Kolasa, joined in as well, looking to come off her new D rank and join John in the upper echelon.
Krait Base made an appearance with their long-standing Officer, William Alonso. Although Alonso made his first finals-match premier last year at Duel in the Den II, beating Wolf Fonzi Ramirez, and placing second to League Champion Tony Zaldua, he has since lost his C ranking earlier this year. Samhain Smash would be a great opportunity to show his stuff and shake off the metaphorical cobwebs.

From the “Home Team”, Lone Wolf 1st Officer Hikaru Hayakawa comes into the tournament looking to defend The Den again, and make this a “Three-peat” versus Mullins. The rivalry is strong here as John stands in his way to reaching his C rank aspirations. LWB co-founder, Dustin Speratos, has been striving to drop his Unranked title and finally join the rest of his competitive team in the rankings.
Newcomer, Armando Aguirre, made his first appearance, looking to Bust some Ghosts and make his own presence known! He also comes down representing the Irvine Knights.
The most surprising showing of Samhain Smash is a member from a live-steel, armored combat group, the Los Angeles Golden Knights. Years ago, David Ortiz was a member of Order of Ōkami (Lone Wolf’s predecessor group), and later a member of The Saber Legion Socal Chapter. After years off from competitive lightsaber fighting, Ortiz makes a showing against some of his former teammates!

The pools started as a seven person round robin, and we quickly saw a distinct gap. Hayakawa was hungry for his promotion and it showed as he ended pools with a flawless six wins, gapping most competitors very easily. The “Wildcard”, Ortiz, showed that although he has been on lightsaber hiatus, he was not rusty. Ortiz only dropped one match, versus Hayakawa, but it was one of the closest matches of the evening, at four to five and ending at time. Mullins and Speratos dropped half of their matches. Both of them losing to the two formerly mentioned combatants and Mullins losing to Speratos in a very close, Sudden Death seven-all match, and Speratos losing to Aguirre seven to eight.
Aguirre made quite a showing, boasting some impressive agility and bolstering quick attacks and even faster retreats. Also winning half his matches in pools, Aguirre’s speed was no match for Wolf Speratos, Rookie Knight Kolasa and Krait Dragon Alonso.

Moving all of the competitors into the brackets, Kolasa and William had to fight hard for the first stage. Kolasa faced Golden Knight Ortiz. Although their match in the pools went to time, with Ortiz ahead, seven to five, Kolasa showed much greater urgency, keeping up, neck-and-neck, and pulling a last second point to bring the match to Sudden Death, at seven to seven! Ortiz cleaned up with a first-hit, and moved on to the semi-finals at eight to seven.
Alonso had the C-ranked monster, Mullins, to defeat in his single-elimination match. Trailing behind early, Alonso landed some clean hand snipes and floats to keep up in points, stalling at five-all half way through the match and pulled just ahead shortly after. Mullins rallied forward and closed out the match, ten to eight, securing the tournament as a C-2 ranked match.
Rounding out the Quarter finals, Speratos and Aguirre had a great rematch. With Aguirre originally winning eight to seven in the last second of their pool match, Speratos had to prove himself to get into the Top 4 and secure a ranking for this tournament. Aguirre took a massive early lead, and held it for the first minute and a half. Speratos seemed to get a solid lock onto Aguirre’s stance switches and started to beat him at his own speedy game, closing out the match ten to six.
Although Wolf -Officer Hayakawa earned a bye into the semi-finals he was faced against Ortiz in the first round of Semi-finals. Having had an extremely close match go to time in the pools, this was looking to be the fight of the night. No one was disappointed when the fight came down to the last 30 seconds and the score was still sitting at five-all. However, with the need for urgency from Ortiz, Hayakawa found some quick hand picks, and created a gap for the remainder of the match. Hayakawa moves one step closer to his ranked promotion at eleven to six.

Mullins versus Speratos was next in line, and seeing as Speratos closed out an upset in the pools, it was anyone’s game to move forward. Although Speratos had a clear fix on Mullins’ movement, Mullins had some amazing hand snipes and a huge defensive play to close out the match ten to four.
We found ourselves at a three-peat between Mullins and Hayakawa! In the history of this rivalry, Hayakawa and Mullins first faced off at Duel in the Den I, Lone Wolf’s premier Spring/Summer tournament series. The final match was a best-of-three rounds, to eight points, with Hayakawa shutting Mullins down two to zero. They met a second time at the Lightspeed Strikes Back National Tournament in Vegas, during which they had a very heated back and forth, but ultimately Hayakawa closing out the match, nine to three, within fifty seconds.
However, this meeting was a little different. Mullins earned his C rank before Hayakawa, a few weeks prior to Samhain Smash and stood as the Big Boss Fight to earn the rank of C as his own. The final match was a single elimination match to twelve, however the match was so back and forth, that both competitors kept points even all the way to time, pouring us over into a Sudden Death overtime scenario, once more! If Hayakawa was to walk away with a C tonight, Mullins was making sure he had to earn it. Sitting at nine to nine, we experienced a few clashing simultaneous exchanges, leaving everyone on the edges of their seats for someone to clearly steal that first touch. With a few artful evasions, and a beautiful low guard attack to the hand, Hayakawa defends the Den for a third time, and is the Samhain Smash champion!

We would like to thank the proprietors of The ComixLounge. They have been our gracious host of The Den for over two years now! Big thanks to Liam Hayakawa for film and photography. Sean Holtzman made an appearance and helped as a secondary judge. Massive thank you to Gamersupps, California Robe Company, Stone Brewery and our local Gamestop for providing some prizes.
And of course, a big thank you to Supreme Leader Cang Snow, without him this league would not exist.

MTFBY
Andre Gonzalez
Lone Wolf Captain

**There was a minor discrepancy with score tallying after the pools. The supplied and charted data has been altered to reflect the real data, based on video and written review.

HAYAKAWA HEROCIALLY HARNESSES C-RANK; THIRD DEN DEFENSE

RESULTS

WINNERS

PROMOTIONS & RE-GRADES