Month: February 2017

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Elevate’s Mr.R May Be Unable to Attend US Tournaments Due to Trump’s Travel Ban

Last week saw United States President Donald Trump sign an executive order restricting travel to the United States of citizens and immigrants from Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, and Libya for a total of four months. While the implications and controversy of this signing will assuredly play out on the political and international stage for a long time to come, it is quite possible that the FGC itself has seen a casualty to this travel ban.

Ramin “Mr.R” Delshad, the current #10 ranked Super Smash Bros. for Wii U player and member of Elevate Gaming, is a Dutch national whose family originally come from Iran. As such, it is uncertain whether he will be able to attend US tournaments as a result of the executive order. He has taken to Twitter to state that while contacting the United States embassy in the Netherlands, he received notice that the travel ban extends to dual nationals.

However, when reading more information provided from the US government, he is given a conflicting report that dual nationals are protected by their issuing document. Thus if he provides a Dutch passport, he will be treated as a Dutch citizen and allowed entrance.

At any rate, the confusion and the concerns over his legal rights has forced him to opt out of going to various early events in the United States, going to Japan to train instead.

Mr.R is certainly not the only player that is feeling the effect of this travel ban sadly, as Street Fighter V player Arman “Phenom” Hanjani is also affected by the current travel restrictions.

Current reports from the US State Department indicate that as long as a person traveling to the USA has a valid passport from an unrestricted country, has a valid US visa and uses that unrestricted passport, they should not be affected by the executive order. As long as Mr.R has a Dutch passport and Phenom has a Norwegian passport, both should be able to attend US events without issue.

Sources: ABC News; PhenomSF (Twitter); Mr.R (Twitter)

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Smug Takes Justin Wong to Duff City in This Impressive Set from ESL’s Street Fighter V King of the Hill

With his main Balrog being considered one of the stronger characters after the balance changes, Team PIE’s Smug is currently one of the players to look out for in Street Fighter V Season 2. Just how big a threat is Smug this season? Well, his match versus Echo Fox’s Justin Wong at ESL’s weekly King of the Hill should provide the answer: very big.

In this ESL match, Smug and his Balrog went up against Justin Wong and his Karin. Now, while Justin is considered one of the strongest competitors in Street Fighter V (let alone a myriad of other fighting games), you wouldn’t know it based on the match with Smug. Time and time again, Smug is seemingly able to shut down Justin’s footsie game and put him in situations where all the latter can do is block and try to mitigate the damage coming his way.

The end result of this set? Smug takes a convincing ten games to one over Justin.

Source: ESL

Posted on

Smug Takes Justin Wong to Duff City in This Impressive Set from ESL’s Street Fighter V King of the Hill

With his main Balrog being considered one of the stronger characters after the balance changes, Team PIE’s Smug is currently one of the players to look out for in Street Fighter V Season 2. Just how big a threat is Smug this season? Well, his match versus Echo Fox’s Justin Wong at ESL’s weekly King of the Hill should provide the answer: very big.

In this ESL match, Smug and his Balrog went up against Justin Wong and his Karin. Now, while Justin is considered one of the strongest competitors in Street Fighter V (let alone a myriad of other fighting games), you wouldn’t know it based on the match with Smug. Time and time again, Smug is seemingly able to shut down Justin’s footsie game and put him in situations where all the latter can do is block and try to mitigate the damage coming his way.

The end result of this set? Smug takes a convincing ten games to one over Justin.

Source: ESL