YoYoFactory Russia welcomes another member to their Junior team, Victor Shevchenko! Judging by this video it looks like a great pick-up for YoYoFactory Russia. Congrats to Victor on joining the team!
Yoyo used is the YoYoFactory Shu-Ta.
Archives for August 13, 2015
Joebert Flores x General Yo Prophecy
Filipino badass Joebert Flores has a new video, and it’s filled with single-element tricks that are easy to understand and crazy hard to hit. My favorite kind of tricks, right there.
Yoyo used is the General Yo Prophecy.
2015 World Yo-yo Contest Day 2 freestyle order
A super busy day awaits players and visitors tomorrow in Tokyo, as over 200 players will be competing in the preliminary round! The full list of competitors can be found on the official website.
The competitor list is a lot more diverse on the second day, as a lot of players come seeded from their respective national contests, and it’ll be quite interesting to see how the difference in styles play out on stage.
In addition to all the players qualified from the wildcard round, we have some top-notch players in this round:
There are still 95 players in the 1A division, including some strong contenders for the world title, including Yusuke Otsuka, Ryota Ogi, and Christopher Chia, and crowd favorites Palli Gudmundsson, Evan Nagao, and Riccardo Fraolini.
In 2A, the most expected performance is from Hiraku Fujii, and while the wildcard round was almost exclusively Japanese, the preliminary round gets a healthy number of foreigners, including four Korean players, a very welcome sight from one of the traditionally less represented countries in a World Yo-yo Contest.
3A gets the addition of World Champion Minato Furuta for the preliminary round, along with seeded players from Taiwan, Singapore, China, Korea, Malaysia, and the USA.
The second largest division in this round is 4A, with 33 players still fighting for a spot in the semi-final round. The wildcard round winners are joined by big names in this division, including Tsubasa Onishi, Jeon Ji Hwan, and Futoshi Maruyama. Tough competition for sure!
The highlights for the preliminaries in the 5A division are some of the world’s most technical and entertaining players, like Bryan Jardin, Sora Ishikawa, and Ryota Torigoe. And with both Hiroyasu Ishihara and Shingo Terada coming from the wildcard round, this division should be a delight to watch!
Tomorrow we also get to see the new “Over 40” division, with both yo-yo dads and veteran players competing at the main stage.
The Iron Mod contest, a tradition from the Orlando era, is also back this year, and will be held on the first floor for all to see! In this time-limited live mod contest, two teams of modders will need to come up with the best possible mod that includes a secret ingredient that will be revealed tomorrow! This time we’ll have Team USA vs. Team Japan, with mod experts Rob Tsou and Kyle Weems representing the US, and custom yo-yo god Shinobu Konmoto and Yuumi Shiga (The Mod Rangers) as Team Japan!
Be sure to catch the live stream starting at around 9:40AM Japan time! (12:40AM GMT)
Back Ti-Yo on Kickstarter!
Sonny Patrick has teamed up with Honolulu-based product designer and machinist Mike Bond to create a new titanium yoyo, available for pre-order now via Kickstarter! That’s right, MOAR TITANIUM! THE SUMMER OF TITANIUM™ WILL NEVER END!
Based on the designs for the legendary and never released Kuntosh and the long sold-out BSP, this new titanium yoyo (called the Ti-Yo, but we’ll forgive them for that) looks like a slim, fast, stable player from one of our favorite yoyo designers of all time. And with Kickstarter rewards starting at just $175 for one of the yoyos, it’s also one of the best deals for a titanium yoyo we’ve seen yet.
The project is nearly fully funded, but you should get your order in now to make sure you get one because hey…who knows if production will continue after this Kickstarter ends.
2015 World Yo-yo Contest Day 1 (wildcard) results
Day 1 of the 2015 World Yo-yo Contest comes to an end after a marathon of over 250 players going through the wildcard round for all divisions! Here are the results!
1A
As expected, this was a tough and cruel round for the 169 players competing for a spot in tomorrow’s preliminaries. Only 33 players made it through, with some of the crowd favorites failing to advance. The American players did a great job, with six players (Andrew Bergen, Colin Beckford, Eric Tran-Ton, Clint Armstrong, Kevin Nicholas, and Lucas Gremler) among the qualified, along with two contestants from China (Pisco and Weichuan Wang) and one from Hong Kong (Benson Fok). Among those who failed to make the cut were Vashek Kroutil, Hidemasa Senba, Eric Koloski, and Ryosuke Iwasawa.
These are the qualified players in 1A:
- Toya Kobayashi (Japan)
- Benson Fok (Hong Kong)
- Izuru Hasumi (Japan)
- Andrew Bergen (United States)
- Yuki Nishisako (Japan)
- Yuya Yatani (Japan)
- Colin Beckford (United States)
- Ryota Komatsu (Japan)
- Shinya Kido (Japan)
- Hiroaki Yoshii (Japan)
- Eric Tran-Ton (United States)
- Tatsuaki Okamoto (Japan)
- Koyo Hashimoto (Japan)
- Clint Armstrong (United States)
- Pisco (China)
- Ayumu Harada (Japan)
- Kevin Nicholas (United States)
- Daiki Tanaka (Japan)
- Kazuya Murata (Japan)
- Tsukasa Namba (Japan)
- Yuki Shigematsu (Japan)
- Kento Muraoka (Japan)
- Kaito Tanaka (Japan)
- Amane Okubo (Japan)
- Weichuan Wang (China)
- Ginji Miura (Japan)
- Takumi Sakamoto (Japan)
- Ryosuke Hara (Japan)
- Shinji Toyoda (Japan)
- Kenta Kushiro (Japan)
- Tomoki Toyama (Japan)
- Lucas Gremler (United States)
- Ryo Igarashi (Japan)
Full results for 1A can be found here.
2A
With only one player outside Japan competing in the wildcard round, it’s no surprise that all eleven qualified players are Japanese. We hoped 1999 World Champion Takumi Nagase would make it, but he was unable to match the speed of the current 2A generation.
- Ginji Miura (Japan)
- Koichiro Ueta (Japan)
- Yutaro Kasuya (Japan)
- Reo Takamatsu (Japan)
- Yuki Takami (Japan)
- Shinnosuke Ishizaka (Japan)
- Hajime Sakauchi (Japan)
- Yamato Fujiwara (Japan)
- Masaki Iida (Japan)
- Shuji Kotani (Japan)
- Yuki Yamaguchi (Japan)
3A
3A has been improving at a fast pace, and the times when just being able to throw double-trapeze were enough to be competitive are long gone. Almost all of the competitors in the 3A wildcard round are Japanese, but Ayoun Kuo from Taiwan managed to squeeze into the next round!
- Yuto Yamaguchi (Japan)
- Takumi Yasumoto (Japan)
- Shoto Yamamoto (Japan)
- Sora Tahira (Japan)
- Ayoun Kuo (Taiwan)
- Takayuki Namba (Japan)
4A
There are a lot of people who want Rei Iwakura’s spot as king of offstring! No less than forty-two players competed in this division, including a handful from the world’s 4A elite! Ben Conde, Bryan Figueroa, and Naoto Okada had no trouble making it to the preliminary round, while two-time World Champion Eiji Okuyama, and Atsushi Yamada both failed to make it through in this tough division.
- Yuki Nishisako (Japan)
- Shuji Kinoshita (Japan)
- Ben Conde (United States)
- Bryan Figueroa (United States)
- Sota Maeda (Japan)
- Naoto Okada (Japan)
- Keita Kido (Japan)
- Koyo Hashimoto (Japan)
- Renta Motoyama (Japan)
- Ryo Oishi (Japan)
- Kei Hashimoto (Japan)
- Tomohiko Zanka (Japan)
- Yohei Kagawa (Japan)
5A
Counterweight is the contest’s smallest division, and while the number of contestants was small, we are super excited about the players who are competing, and even though 2004 World Champion Makoto Numagami was unable to make it through, the wildcard ranking is led by two equally legendary names: Hiroyasu “Pon” Ishihara, and 2001 World Champion Shingo Terada!
- Hiroyasu Ishihara (Japan)
- Shingo Terada (Japan)
- Shohei Nishio (Japan)
- Kazuma Miyakawa (Japan)
- Tatsunori Yoshiba (Japan)
The full list for 2A-5A can be found here.
Stay tuned for more updates from the greatest contest ever!
Paul Dang – Seasoned Traveler
Paul Dang and some friends spent some time with The Seasoned Traveler when it stopped in Oregon! Featuring Paul Dang, Tanner Murphy, Chris Miller, and Darin Havens.
The Seasoned Traveler is part of the Traveling Throw project, where a single yoyo is sent around the world for various players to use and film. The Seasoned Traveler is a second yoyo that is being sent to notable pros and sponsored players, while the Traveling Throw is open to anyone.
Yoyo used is the Monkeyfinger TRI-B.