Cody ‘iBDW’ Schwab is your Smash Summit champion! Again! 🏆🏆

Image proved by @BTSsmash on twitter

27-year-old Smash Smash Bros. Melee player Cody ‘iBDW’ Schwab continued his run as one of the best players in the world since his rise during the online-era of Smash and won his 2nd Summit in a row. Using Fox as his main character, iBDW wiped the field with Fox and his ninja shit, dropping only a single game to three opponents on the way to the Grand-Final (each match-up is Bo5). This is the first time a player has won consecutive Summit’s since Armada won the first 4 Summit Majors between 2015 and 2017. Luckily for iBDW and the rest of the field, Armada has been retired for nearly four years now.

The Major tournament fielded some of the best Super Smash Bros. Melee competitors from around the world such as legends Hungrybox, Leffen, Mang0, and plenty of other elite contenders and Major champions like Zain and Plup. The action was intense throughout and saw plenty of great matches, with multiple big upsets along the way. Leffen and Zain who are two of the best players in the history of the game were both vanquished by Jmook, with Jmook only dropping a single round in his match vs Zain. Leffen is solidly thought of as one of the 6 best players to ever play the game, on the same level as The Five Gods, and Zain has won 3 majors in 2022 alone. Jmook has never won a major, but after coming in 2nd at Genesis 8 the New York based player will be looking to continue this hot streak he’s been on.

In an awesome show of solidarity, many of the best players at the tournament gave a shout out to Jmook in their post-match interviews and appealed to potential esports organizations to sign up the un-sponsored player. FlyQuest who already sponsors multiple fighters on their esports lineup even tweeted about potentially entering negotiations 👀 We love to see a king succeed.

Thankfully or sadly depending on who you root for, the upsets certainly didn’t end with Jmooks run. KoDoRiN beat Mang0 in a closely competed 3-2 match, marking the third event in a row that Mang0 has failed to make it to the final 8. Elsewhere, after losing to Jmook in the first round of the Winners Bracket, Leffen’s tournament only got worse as IloD and his Peach main wiped the floor with Leffen’s Fox main. Ilod beat Leffen in a clean 3-0 sweep, marking the first time since 2014 Leffen has lost to ANYONE playing as a Peach main. That was also an 0-3 sweep loss to Armada at Beauty 9 in December of 2014. After 8 long years our mushroom-munching princess has gotten a W

Having ran through the entire field like a hot knife through butter with wins over n0ne, Jmook, and Hungrybox, iBDW finally faced some serious shit in the Grand Final against Plup. Both iBDW and Plup play as Fox mains so you couldn’t have had a more level playing field, but Plup shot out the gates and stole the first 2 rounds with relative ease. Plup still had 3 stocks (lives) remaining at the end of the first round and then took the 2nd round as well. Right as it was looking like iBDW was about to be sent home in a sweep he kicked it back into gear and stopped his fellow Panda player right in his tracks. With 3 straight rounds that went down to the final stock for both competitors, iBDW pulled off the reverse-sweep and won the Grand Final 3-2 against Plup. Plup managed to survive all the way up to 181% damage until he was finally blasted off the map.

After winning the Grand Final match and his 2nd consecutive Smash Summit, an emotional iBDW took the podium for his post-match interview. There he dedicated this tournament win to his father who has been battling cancer for months as iBDW has done all he can to help care for him. He later reflected this in a tweet, where he again dedicated his big W to his pops.