For long time fans of competitive fighting games, SonicFox comes across as a player from a different era. The Mortal Kombat 11 and Dragonball FighterZ specialist established his dominance in MK11 with an unlikely run that was one step away from legendary by almost winning NEC 19 last weekend with one of the worst characters in the game. SonicFox boasted that he would not only main the lowly Kollector for the tournament, but was just moments away from winning it with him, too.
The current MK meta places characters like Sonya, Erron Black, Gerras, and the dreaded Liu Kang as the best characters in the game. Kollector has mostly lingered as a basement dweller bordering on troll character. Outside of curiousity or a bizarre counter-pick, the ghastly kleptomaniac has seldom seen tournament play. As NEC is the final tournament for players to get points ahead of the Mortal Kombat 11 Pro Kompetition circuit, SonicFox’s use of Kollector comes across as a throw-away effort while everyone was making their desperate final push.
SonicFox first plowed through END|Scar’s Kung Lao in the pool of 16 by the score of 2-1 and headed into his first real roadblock in winners semi-finals against STELLA|ArnKratos and his Shang Tsung. ArnKratos would send SonicFox to losers by the score of 3-2, but would have to meet him against in losers finals after SonicFox cleaned house ahead of their rematch. Unlike their first match, ArnKratos had no answer for SonicFox’s adjustments and was swept out of losers 3-0.
With a chance to run the table with the low tier character and secure an improbable tournament win, SonicFox had to face off against emerging rival CGL|Ninjakilla212 who has been trouble for SonicFox at his best. Even with the tournament on the line, SonicFox did not waver from Kollector against Ninjakilla212’s Johnny Cage, but the outcome went exactly as anticipated at that point. Ninjakilla212 put an end to SonicFox’s epic run with a 3-0 sweep in grand finals, securing the win and preventing being on the wrong side of a SonicFox career highlight video.
In current fighting games, be it Smash Ultimate or Tekken 7 and the like, there are very few character specialists that can go deep in tournaments against all conventional wisdom or tier lists. SonicFox did go on to emphasize that he believes that all characters are viable in MK11 following the latest patch, but there are few who could have had a run along the lines he had last weekend.