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3. Welcome to Stronger Yo-yo Cup EP1
The first Episode
It was the day of Stronger Yo-yo Cup EP1, and everyone was late. We opened the doors at 5:00 PM, with dinner served at 6:15 PM and the contest starting at 7:45 PM.
We actually started at 8:30 PM...
*This was the reason why every future Stronger event was strict about registrations and arrivals.
Other than that, Episode 1 was hilarious. The crowd was loud, and the majority participated in the trash talking—even during the freestyles, which I found really funny haha. Oh, and Quoc Anh showed up! He was pretty overpowered in early 2023, so of course, he won X-Division.
Quoc Anh and I didn’t talk at MYYC 2022, but we had a good conversation during EP1. He mentioned he had a great time and enjoyed being in Malaysia, and I’ll probably see more of him.
It was also my first time hearing of SENSE - I became an instant fan of their yo-yos. I remember searching them up on Rewind and seeing Ahmad Kharisma (A good friend) having a signature yo-yo and being on the team too. I actually bought an Anti-Mono too which was my first yo-yo purchase in forever. The last yo-yo I bought before that was a Space Cowboy by YYF from the 28spin store. So yeah, it's been awhile.
Amirrul Rahman (2016 Malaysian Champion) also showed up and won the 1A Division. Back then a lot of us we were still stuck in the string hit meta but Amirrul was up to date on "absolute clicks" so he was the clear winner.
After the freestyles I was also pressured to do my first Stronger demo. At that point I haven't played yo-yo since MYYC2022, and just asked them to play a random song on Spotify. The song they chose was the song Shakeel used to beat me at MYYC13. Assholes.
Another cool thing about the event was Darrell Mitchell texting me that he wanted to come down and support my first contest. If you know Darrell - he is the king of flaking. Dude says that he will show up to things, no shows and then disappears for months. It was a pleasant surprise that he showed up and even did for a freestyle for us!
Post Episode 1
The event was a success, and the Malaysian community looked like it was back to it's peak. In the end, I managed to lose an additional RM500 by ordering a lot of food so it was about RM4,500 (USD1100) negative which with heavy copium wasn't too bad, considering most of it was spent on equipment so any future events would be cheaper to host. EP1 was also held in my office so there was no venue costs.
EP1 was also the only Stronger where I made a feedback form for attendees to share what I could have done better. Since its been almost 2 years, here was the feedback I got:
I was very thankful for the support I got for the contest - Salman helping with music & video, the judges and kedaiyoyo for the prizes. Things were looking up for the Malaysian scene and Stronger looked like a promising series of contests.
While I was packing up the venue, a couple of guys stayed behind to help move things around. As we turned off the lights and closed the doors, Marcus Ee told me this was his last contest - he was quitting yo-yos.
To be continued...