Gladiators

Here’s one of the reasons in-person smash tournaments are cool: you get to watch your friends fight. Each other, invaders, fight themselves.

Everyone, at some point, ends up “on stream,” on display, like a gladiator in the center of the colosseum, where you must endure the shouts of the crowd and the judging eyes of hundreds or even thousands of peers at once.  

For many, a “last hit” game 5 set, on stream, deep into a bracket, affords the most fear and exhilaration they can feel in their normal adult waking lives. I know it is that way for me.