The first champion of the Pokémon Players Cup III has been crowned, with Jacob “Jukem” Waller taking home the Pokkén Tournament DX title after an insane lower bracket run.
The grand finals of the event was a familiar sight. Jukem clashed against fellow top player and former Champion Davon “Shadowcat” Amos-Hall, taking down the Darkrai master 3-2 to win the entire event.
Jukem and his world-class Sceptile were knocked into the lower bracket following a 3-1 loss to Allister Singh’s Suicune in winners round two. He went on to beat Umberto “Goreson” Tagliafierro, Anthony “Rokso” Paratore, and swapped to Empoleon to take the rematch against Allister in the losers finals.
In their previous meeting in the grand finals of the first Players Cup, Shadowcat went entirely Darkrai and ended up beating Jukem to win the entire event. Instead of the classic Darkrai/Sceptile matchup repeating itself again, however, both players started things off on different picks.
Shadowcat had been using primarily Braxian throughout the event, while Jukem had freely swapped between his dual mains. The two kicked off the finals with a Braxian/Empoleon matchup that saw the Water-type applying constant pressure to his opponent and eventually taking game one.
That Emploleon would end up taking Jukem all the way to a bracket reset on a 3-1 series win but Shadowcat stuck with Braxian to start the reset and went up 2-0 very quickly, which forced Jukem to swap to his Sceptile to try and flip things back around.
That move seemed to work, as the offensive prowess of the Grass-type brought things to a game five after winning two straight games. With the tournament on the line, Shadowcat brought out the Darkrai for the title defense.
Jukem would end up securing the reverse sweep after a close final set, timing out Shadowcat to take the win and earn his fourth Pokkén title. For his prize, Jukem received a voucher for travel to any future International Play! Pokémon Championship.
