« The Salty Runback : January Power Rankings »

Photo courtesy of SteveHwang.comSo, after reading the title, I'm assuming the first question on your mind is, "What are Power Rankings?" Simply put, the Power Rankings are me taking the players in NorCal, looking over their performance in the month's tournaments, and then ranking them according to success or impact (or both). Every month, the line-up will change, as players stumble or succeed.

Before we get into that, however, I wanted to take a minute to give my personal take on the IPW Topic of the Week. You're already aware that IPW streamed West Coast Warzone. Technical issues, like angry pimples, arose unexpectedly. Some of the problems were severe enough to force down time, some of that outage occuring with markedly unfortunate timing.

The result, of course, was a legion of stream monsters armed with pitchforks and torches.

First, I'd like to say that I respect Haunts for stepping up and putting out there, in plain terms, exactly what happened. It shows a lot of class on his part, and it's a gesture that exhibits respect that few of the wordsmiths patting themselves on the back for coining phrases like, "Stay free IPW," were capable of offering themselves.

For being what it is, IPW is remarkable. It is, at its core, professional-grade presentation brought to you by an amateur crew, which is not to insult the skills possessed by the team here. When I use the word "amateur", I mean it in a more literal sense. This is not an income source for the team. Each one has day jobs. Most have full time day jobs.

It sounds extremely cliche to say this, but a lot of hard work is poured into this website, whether it's creating original content, scouring news sources for scoops, giving players and community members a platform to be heard and have a voice of their own, promoting events all over the United States with article coverage, or supporting events here in California with live streams. One or more of the team is hard at work on the site at any given minute of any given day.

IPW has been bringing that level of dedication to the table and giving quality to the community for over two years now. Knowing that is why when I read things like, "IPW isn't ready for a stream like this," it leaves me dumbfounded. I wasn't at West Coast Warzone, but I have spent twelve, thirteen hour days commentating streams that had viewership that was comparable or higher than WCW 3, and while I haven't seen the final tallies for stream traffic, I know Warzone drew a whole lotta' heads.

That same feeling of speechlessness finds me when I read things like, "If Insert Website/Stream Here had been streaming this, we wouldn't have these problems." Every stream has these sorts of issues. So much of what is done is dependent upon factors that are out of the hands of the teams producing this content; providers, hardware, venues, all of it can and does steer south.

Having been in the crosshairs before, I know how little stock to put into threats like, "I will never watch this stream again." Don't get me wrong, those words get taken seriously. The idea here, at the core, is to get as many people watching this as possible. Otherwise, what's the point? However, the more vocal voices for negativity tend to be the sorts of individuals that can never be pleased, men (and maybe women) that choose to express that perpetual discontent with idle threats. I can't speak for Haunts, but I can only assume he didn't come into this weekend thinking, "All I need to do is screw up at just the right times, then I can lose a couple hundred viewers for good." Most sane members of the community understand that fact and are willing to overlook technical difficulties in favor of focusing on an awesome product.

If you lack that understanding, and you honestly believe there is some conspiracy at play to draw you in and then ruin your evening with what you deem to be a sub-par viewing experience, well, again, I can't speak for Haunts, but I'm backing away from you slowly from fear of your un-diagnosed (or hell, completely diagnosed for all I know) paranoid schitzophrenia.

On to the rankings!

Obviously, the final order for this sort of thing is based on my own judgment. If you disagree, please feel free to let me know, as vociferously as you like, in the comments.

1.) EG Ricky Ortiz

A second consecutive major win swings the pendulum back away from Filipino Champ and into Ricky's favor. Watching Ricky's face go sour in the finals before roaring out with a double perfect was momentous. Some people are claiming that WCW 3 was the last tournament of the "Street Fighter 4 era". If that's true, it's appropriate that Ricky walked away the victor; no other player has been as consistently strong in SF4, not just in NorCal, but in all of the U.S. of A.

2.) BLG Filipino Champ

Champ finished fourth at WCW3, which some people are calling a disappointment - I read an SRK poster say that Champ's 4th place finish "exposes" him. That should go a long way to illustrating the kind of success he enjoyed at the tail end of 2010, and just what some people have come to expect from him. By the way, if someone would like to explain to me how finishing fourth at a major means you've been "exposed", I'm all ears.

3.) John Choi

Wait, who? It was a quiet 2010 for Choiboy, but at Tight or Fight 2, he took the top spot in Super Singles and his 2v2 team finished third. Anyone quick to dictate his success a bi-product of an absent Ricky/Champ/Vance needs to give me their short list of other players they think can compete with John. In singles, he was knocked into losers by Lamerboi, coming back to take the fight money. Like Buktooth said today on Facebook, "Losers bracket John is a real thing."

4.) Mr. Naps

Jimmy took some time out of his busy Tight or Fight Tekken schedule to carry Hargi to first place in 2v2 teams (I joke!), and also won third in Super singles. With Arcade Edition signaling the arrival of the Age of Viper, everyone in NorCal should be nervous.

Affecting his ranking was Nap's narrow loss to Rom in the never-ending SVGL Battle of the Hair.

5.) Lamerboi

Lamerboi showed up in Milpitas and did exactly what he does at every tournament : play super solid and bust up the brackets, taking second in both singles and with his team in the 2v2. Hard to believe it hasn't even been a year since this guy broke out at Super NCR versus Justin Wong, and now I hear people saying that he, Dieminion, and Hugh Jackman run a neck-and-neck race for best Guile in the States.

Them's the digits for January. Catch up next month when we weigh in with two late January tournies : Clocktower and Crossroads... and some video game with Spider-Man in it?!