Ninja Battles Fortnite Tournament – Surprise Wins and Toxic Players

Esports News
June 13, 2020
Jordan Ashley

Fortnite is in a bit of a lull as it waits for its newest season. The competitive side of the game has died off just a little bit. To fill that gap, Ninja has stepped up. The streamer has been hosing the Ninja Battles Fortnite tournament. This is an event featuring an array of pro players and streamers competing for an $80,000 prize pool each week.

The event might not have the hype of an Epic-run event, but it is so far proving to be a lot more dramatic. Compared to recent offerings from Epic the Ninja Battles Fortnite tournament has been a breath of fresh air.

Ninja Battles Fortnite Tournament - Surprise Wins and Toxic Players

© Ninja Battles

Ninja Battles Week 1

The first week of the Ninja Battles Fortnite tournament ended fairly dramatically. The winner of the tournament came as something of a surprise with TSM Zexrow taking home first with his partners MacWood and Calc. Although it seems Zexrow believes he was entirely responsible for that win and launched into a bit of a tirade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H-cSRFEihA

 

As the clip shows, he wasn’t exactly a gracious winner. Following the outburst, Zexrow was banned from future Ninja Battles events and he tweeted out an apology. His team, TSM, followed this up with an apology of their own. This one was coupled with the threat of the player being dropped if the incident repeats itself, giving him a last chance. They’re coming down pretty hard on him.

Week 2 of Ninja Fortnite Tournament

Week 2 of Ninja Battles wasn’t any less dramatic. While no player ran their mouth off and get themselves banned, it had its own big moments going on.

The tournament was pretty hotly contested. For a lot of it, it seemed that Nate Hill’s team with bully and FunkBomb was set to win the whole thing. This didn’t quite go to plan though.

Eventually, EmadGG, Commandment, and Bizzle took first place. While Bizzle is a pretty big name in competitive Fortnite, EmadGG definitely isn’t. This is their first tournament win, ever. That’s a high-stakes result for your first big win! This team deserved the win in the end, demonstrating some real skill over the other players.

Is Ninja Battles More Interesting Than FNCS?

The last few rounds of the FNCS and other Epic events have been leveled with a few accusations, but being boring and badly run are some of the main ones. Network problems have blighted the events. Yet, the Ninja Battles Fortnite tournament seems to be capturing fan’s attention in a completely different way. The action is more explosive, and the games seem to have higher stakes despite the lower prize pools. It could be down to the more restrictive player pool for the tournament, with only one region competing. This concentrates the talent in one game.

However, it can also be the element of unpredictably that has been thrown in by making it a short-run tournament. The Ninja Battles are definitely proving entertaining. They’re doing that more so than Epic’s official events have managed recently. While no one is suggesting Epic significantly scale down their competitive offerings to fit this template. Currently, competitive is almost non-existant and Fortnite betting with it. It would be interesting to see more one-off or smaller Fortnite events, the ones that can concentrate the highest tier players in one place again.

Read next: The never-ending fight in tackling players’ toxic behavior

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