With 780 players competing, the 2023 Orlando Regional Championship made history as the biggest Pokémon tournament ever. Familiar faces like Aaron Traylor, Emilio Forbes, and James Baek were in attendance, but it was 2016 World Champion Wolfe Glick who made it through all 15 rounds to take home the win in Orlando.
Wolfe is not only a Pokémon Champion but also a popular VGC content creator with nearly one million followers.
After defeating Ashton Cox in the finals, Wolfe posted a video on Youtube to talk about the experience and explain his thought process in those final three games.
Wolfe thought he might lose Game Three
Going into the final round, Wolfe felt his Perish Trap team had a good matchup against Ashton’s Dondozo and Tatsugiri. Wolfe took the first game, and Ashton evened up the score in the second, so it all came down to game three.
In game three, Ashton’s Dondozo landed a critical hit onto Wolfe’s Scream Tail, knocking it out in the process. The crit was huge since Wolfe was confident Scream Tail was bulky enough to survive a normal hit from Dondozo.
Scream Tail had also just used Perish Song before fainting, and it would’ve been a lot easier to stall out Dondozo if that crit hadn’t knocked out the pink Paradox Pokémon.
With one Pokémon down, Wolfe suddenly found himself in a tough situation. There was even a turn where he didn’t have enough time to think his move through because there were too many possible scenarios at that point. He wasn’t sure if he could bring it back, but Ashton’s Dondozo eventually fell to Perish Song, and the next biggest threat was Gholdengo.
During the match, Ashton mentioned his Gholdengo was bulky enough to potentially survive a Flare Blitz from Arcanine, but Wolfe ended up getting the high roll to one-shot the golden Pokémon. From there, Wolfe was able to wrap up the tournament with his Amoonguss and Gothitelle, two core members of his Perish Trap team.
History repeated itself
In the video, Wolfe also mentioned this wasn’t his first encounter with runner-up Ashton Cox. Out of 780 players, it’s incredible Wolfe found himself against Ashton for the second time at a regional tournament with a Perish Trap team.
The first time was back in 2015 when Wolfe fought his way to victory with a team of Mega Gengar, Politoed, Scrafty, Arcanine, Gothitelle, and Amoonguss. He brought the latter half of that 2015 team, along with Palafin, Scream Tail, and Flutter Mane, to Orlando where he once again found a way to beat Ashton in the final round.
And those aren’t the only two times they’ve faced each other in tournaments. They’ve now gone head-to-head against each other ten times. Although the 9-1 record is a little one-sided in Wolfe’s favor, Ashton did get one win against the World Champ.
Rather than a coincidence, this is clear proof that they are two veteran players in the Pokemon VGC scene who’ve been at the top of their game for all these years.
