Canada Cup History

After a grass-roots tournament called Calgary Cup took place in 2009, three Calgarian gamers decided to take it further and create the first internationally recognized fighting game event in Canada. To accommodate their vision, Lap Chi Duong, Greg Dawson and Troy Kirkland formed Canada Cup Gaming and the 2010 Canada Cup was born.

Daigo “The Beast” Umehara and Mago were the first Japanese players ever to compete in Canada, along with notable U.S. players Justin “EG Jwong” Wong, Mike Ross and Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez. The 2010 Canada Cup gave local players the chance to challenge international players who most Canadians would never have had the opportunity to meet. After each day’s events, players were treated to after hours rooms for grudge matches and on the last day what would become a staple of Canada Cup events, the notorious wrap up party.

Calgary's CCG.Jozhear faces off against Daigo "The Beast" Umehara at the 2010 Canada Cup.

The weekend can be summed up perfectly with this . . .

 

Once the dust had settled, the Canada Cup team got to focusing on 2011 immediately. 2011 was a huge year for the fighting game community: Marvel vs Capcom 3, Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition and Mortal Kombat 9 all landed and all became instant tournament standards. It’s clear that we as a community were seeing an explosion of the genre we loved. In turn, the Canada Cup Gaming team go new projects under way. Marvel Madness was organized as an homage to Canada Cup’s roots in the Calgary Cup and as a celebration of the release of Marvel vs Capcom 3.  It quickly turned from just a local event into a Western Canadian event as players from across western Canada attended as well as seeing the return of JWong and Gootecks to Canada as well as James Chen and Martin “Marn” Phan. It was clear that Canada Cup Gaming events were getting attention from abroad.

Something else came from the follow up to Marvel Madness; Canada Cup Gaming entered into the sponsorship arena picking up Kenny “AIR” Lam and David “Detrimantix” Perras as their first two signature players. Over the next year these two players represented Canada Cup Gaming at tournaments across North America.

All the while, the Canada Cup Gaming team was working on next fall’s big event: the 2011 Canada Cup. At this point it was clear that three people was not enough to handle the rigors of such an undertaking so Derryk Blair was added to the management side of Canada Cup Gaming.

 

We planned the 2011 event to be like nothing the fighting game world had seen before: 5-on-5 matches with teams competing under the banner of their home country. For the first time, players were in a position where they had to select their own national teams to represent them in a fighting game. From an incredible singles experience to the edge-of-your-seat 5-on-5 matches, the 2011 Canada Cup emerged as a thrilling and unique event.

To get the perspective from our own CCG.AIR, his blog on the event can be found here.

 

 

Now we are into 2012 and what people have seen of Canada Cup events is just the beginning . . .