MBA Write series: Post tournament interview with RIZE Aixy

Saturday marked the first ever MBA Dragonball Fighter Z tournament hosted at Arcade club. The level of competition on the day was impressive, with players traveling from across the UK to claim the inaugural victory. Rize gaming’s Aixy was the most impressive on the day running through the bracket undefeated and claiming 1st place in a dominant showing. Electronic dojo’s Jinty came a close 2nd place just edging out Mr.E had to settle for 3rd place with MBA’s highest placing representative BP Tank at 4th place.

After the tournament I was lucky enough to catch up with Rize’s Aixy and ask him a couple questions about his performance, his thoughts on the game and his ambitions for this year.

What were your thoughts on the level of competition going into the tournament and were you confident in your ability with the brief time you had to train and adapt to a new game?

Mr.E has beaten me at every set I’ve played against him and realising that he was going to be at the event too, I knew that he was the one to beat if I wanted to win the tournament.

I’ve already had a lot of time with the game during the open beta but it wasn’t enough to carry me to victory. It was mainly the hours that I spent playing with other players online (af0xygrampa, KNX and Jinty) that gave me the confidence and ability to perform well at the event.

What are your thoughts on the game itself, what is it you like about it and where do you see the game going in the fighting game community?

I think Dragon Ball Fighter Z is a great game. Since it’s release, many people from different fighting game backgrounds/scenes have started playing it and even people with zero knowledge about Dragon Ball have grown interest towards the game. What makes it enjoyable for me is the competitive side of it – being able to compete against all of those different players and their play styles gives it that unique experience.

As for the future of DBFZ within the FGC, I believe that the game will continue to do well. It has drawn a lot of players from different fighting game scenes (MvC/NRS for example) so there will still be an appreciable amount of competition until the next BIG fighting game.

As a player, for those who know you from you past performances across multiple games, you seem to have a crazy natural ability to learn games extremely quickly and compete at a high level, how do you do it!?

Well ever since I picked up a SNES controller at the age of 4, I was able to pull off Hadoukens consistently immediately after being told how to do them by my older brother. I guess it’s just a natural talent that I have where

I can instantly work out how a game works just by looking at it. I can’t really explain how I do it, it just comes naturally.

We’ve seen recently you have been sponsored by RIZE gaming (Twitter @RizeGamingPro), what are your personal goals for this year and how will RIZE help you achieve them?

I have been planning to pick up every fighting game for this year so Soul Calibur 6 and Blazblue: Cross Tag Battle are the titles that I’m looking at next. Soul Calibur has been one of my favourite fighting game series of all time so I’m quite happy that Bandai Namco are releasing their next instalment of the game.   

As for my personal goals, I’d like to perform the best that I can and represent RIZE at every event I go to. RIZE have done a great job so far in being able to assist me for the events that I go to, so I would to give a huge shout out to them for their support.

Finally we’ve seen you in have a lot of sucess in the past in MKX and more importantly Injustice 2, so i think the first question that comes to mind is…who wins in a fight Superman or Goku?

Definitely Goku. Superman doesn’t stand a chance against Ultra Instinct Goku.

Aixy has certainly set the benchmark for the current level of play in the UK so we look forward to seeing him compete at more events throughout the year. I genuinely think he is a great player who’s born to succeed at the highest level of competition. With a great sponsor like Rize behind him, he will definitely be a player to look out for in 2018.

you can follow Aixy on twitter @aixy_

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