WWE’s recent foray into eSports and video games are due in large part to Xavier Woods’ massive success as both the host and creator of UpUpDownDown, a YouTube channel dedicated to WWE Superstars playing video games. UpUpDownDown has over 1.2 million subscribers as of October 2017, and that’s a testament to just how good Woods is at that, whatever you want to call it.
WWE has sent Woods out to various video games expos, comic-cons, and eSports events. It’s to the point where he’s nearly as big of a video game personality as he is a WWE Superstar. It’s been such a success that it was only a matter of time before WWE tried hosting their own video game event, and thanks to a partnership with IGN, WWE did exactly that on October 5th in New York City at the first ever WWE x IGN eSports Showdown.
Marvel Vs. Capcom Infinite was the game of choice, and the WWE x IGN eSports Showdown featured a tournament including The New Day, Cesaro, Sasha Banks, A.J. Styles, and Bayley, among others. When it was all said and done, Kofi Kingston took home the first WWE x IGN trophy defeated Xavier Woods 3-2.
According to WWE’s press release, “in a raucous, locker-room clearing final that was dubbed “The Battle for Big E’s Love” by the announce team, Kofi Kingston, down 2-0 against Woods’ squad of Ghost Rider & Dormammu, ripped off three straight wins with the team of Thanos & The Hulk to claim the WWE x IGN trophy.”
Mixed in between all the Marvel Vs. Capcom madness was a few instances of character development both Raw and SmackDown could take some notes from. We’ll get to a few more of them later on, but Cesaro destroying another beach ball is the real winner here.
To add insult to injury, it looks like the fan brought this beachball for Cesaro. It had the Flag of Switzerland all over it. In fairness to Cesaro, though, the fan should have known better. This is kind of his thing.
If you’re at all familiar with the content on UpUpDownDown, you already know that A.J. Styles is an angry gamer and a sore loser. Kofi Kingston beat Styles in the first round and in true New Day fashion, proceeded to dance on Styles’ grave. Styles responded by doing the only logical thing you can do in that situation by breaking a controller off camera. We’ve all been there.
It wouldn’t be a WWE event without someone getting a pie in the face. Seriously, go to YouTube and type in ‘WWE pie in the face’. The number of results is staggering. Woods got a little revenge on The Trending Gamer of the Year, Greg Miller. Don’t worry, he probably deserved it.
It sure sounds like WWE’s inaugural eSports Showdown was a success, chalk-full of video games and wrestling nonsense. If that floats your boat, you can watch the event in its entirety below.
