As the Madden Challenge makes its way east, a lot of people are figuring that now is the time that the “true competition” begins. Hey, I was even guilty of this at one time. The western region has gotten a bad rep for being under competitive, but with some of the things that we saw this year out west, those arguments are becoming unmerited.

Big names win

During our time on the west coast, we saw the following emerge as regional champions: Problem, Duke, Chow, Sirus the Virus, 40 Gs, Pr0digy and finally Taylor.  While many of these aren’t legendary names, most of these competitors are guys that shouldn’t be considered a surprise winner. Problem has been consistently performing in the past few years of Madden Challenge while Chow and Sirus the Virus have been big names along with Madden Nation credits in their past. Pr0digy is also quickly making a name for himself, and we’ll see plenty more of him on this year’s Madden Nation.

I would never call Duke a surprise winner, but he is a player that has other things on his plate aside from Madden. When you see guys like Big Gene, you see someone that has pretty much dedicated their life to becoming a pro Madden player. Duke is pretty tied up at LSU, so you can never be totally sure he’ll be out to compete. After all, Duke even said himself that he wasn’t going to compete in Houston until the last minute. So in some regard, Duke could be considered a surprise (simply because he competed in Houston on a whim). Another surprise was 40 Gs. Had his friend, Big Gene, not handed him the win in the championship in Denver, 40 Gs would not be making an appearance at the finals.  

 

 

Chow can save the west by winning the Madden Challenge

 

 

With these big names taking the titles on the west coast, it shows that this region is no pushover. You would be able to tell if the west was soft because a bunch of nobodies would be emerging as winners. Everyone came in to the Challenge worried that online gamers were going to emerge as dominating figures and start taking over the big names, but all that worry was for naught as we saw the head-to-headers hold steady. (Well…Senor Range showed us a thing or two). 

Not only did the big names win the tournaments, but we saw big names eliminated in the earlier rounds. Big Gene, Da Secret, One9, SaveTime, One Great User, MarcDog, Pretty Boy, Adam Morrison and Tommie Hill were just a few of the consistent participants, bolstering up the competitive field and making these tournaments even more elite. I personally like to use Da Secret as a measuring stick because he has quickly become one of the biggest names in the sport. Da Secret tried a couple times in the west to win a title but came up far short. Now, you can attribute this to two things: an off day by Da Secret or an overly competitive field, either way, the west has to be pretty tough to hold a gamer of this caliber down. 

Saving face

However, you could make a real case for the fact that the west coast players are soft. Yes, we saw some great competition on the west coast this year, but take a look at some of the winners and where they are from. Duke is from Atlanta, Sirus the Virus is from Louisville, Kentucky and 40 Gs is certainly not from anywhere out west. Really, the only true westerners that took titles are Chow, Problem and Pr0digy. The Midwest and east coast ballers are starting to travel more, leaking in to the western regionals and sometimes taking them over. That doesn’t exactly do a whole lot for the credibility of the western region. 

So what is going to silence the critics that say west coast ballers are soft? That’s pretty easy: a Madden Challenge title from a western gamer. Someone from this field needs to step up to win the title and build up the credibility of the region. This isn’t out of the realm of possibility as Chow, Problem and Pr0digy are very strong regional title winners who could knock off some of the big Midwest names. These are gamers that have what it takes to bring home the money. Now that the Madden Challenge has moved on to the Midwest, we’ll see how the competition stacks up.