Congratulations to Hajime Miura, winner of the 3A division at the 2019 World YoYo Contest!
Full results below, and video of the rest of the division here: 2019 World YoYo Contest 3A Division
YoYo Related News From Around The World
By Steve Brown
Congratulations to Hajime Miura, winner of the 3A division at the 2019 World YoYo Contest!
Full results below, and video of the rest of the division here: 2019 World YoYo Contest 3A Division
By Steve Brown
3-time World YoYo Champion Hajime Miura blows minds and puts everyone on blast for Worlds 2018 with this new video.
Yoyos used are the sOMEThING – Anglam ver.CC, Phaser, Jet Set EC and Jet Set EX.
By Steve Brown
By Steve Brown
Hajime Miura, the 2016 World YoYo Champion in the 3A division, just wants to let you know that he’s gonna be the 2017 World YoYo Champion in the 4A division. Daaaaaamn.
Yoyo used is the Something Jet Set EC.
By Steve Brown
Japanese EDM group Future Boyz (you might remember them from their appearance at the 2015 World YoYo Contest) just dropped a new video for their song “Throw Down with MK” and yeah…it’s a straight up yoyo video. The music video features Shaqler, because they are amazing, as well as stage footage of a pile of different players from the recent THROWDOWN contest in Japan. I’m always excited to see our scene get some love…huge thanks to Future Boyz for shining a light on some of the best players in our scene.
Featuring Shaqler (John Ando, Atsushi Yamada, Shu Takada), Ann Connolly, Tessa Piccillo, Hajime Miura, Marcus Koh, Ben Conde, Carlos Braun, and Paul Kerbel.
44FESTIVAL, the freestyle contest brought to you by the good folks at 44FESTA, with support from yo-yo clubs from all over Japan, was held on March 20th and 21st, presented by YoyoRecreation.
The contest is not part of the official Japanese contest calendar, and the objective is bringing all those yo-yo clubs and putting together an event organized by players for the players.
Regional contests (44FESTIVAL East and 44FESTIVAL West) were held in October and December last year, respectively, with winners guaranteeing a seed to this event.
Prelims were held on the first day, along with performances from DJs Roan (Hiro Irifune) and Koichiro Ueta.
Judging was in good hands, with very experienced judges taking care of both technical and performance scores.
Tech. judges: Ryosuke Kawamura, Takao Morioka, Naoya Takeuchi, Hiro Irifune
Performance judges: Master Kenichi Nakamura, Ryusei Saito, Jun Mikami, Jun Aramaki
In addition to the preliminary round, a trick showcase and the now obligatory after party were held after the freestyles.
Finals day was packed, and all eyes were on the competitors, who did not disappoint! The contest is not divided into the usual 1A-5A divisions, and all players compete together instead, which makes for a very interesting and slightly unpredictable event!
A few years ago, such a contest would be heavily biased towards 1A and 2A players, but with all divisions reaching such a high level and maturity, it’s no surprise that the top places were not from either of those! Check the full results below:
You can check all of the freestyles on this playlist.
The winner and his sweet prize bag!
44FESTIVAL comes to and end, but Masanobu Iwata and the fantastic folks at 44FESTA and the yo-yo clubs from around Japan are already hard at work putting together their next meetings and events. If you’re in Japan, be sure to attend any of those great events and thank the organizers for all the effort and love they put into their local events!
By Steve Brown
World YoYo Champion Hajime Miura has been enjoying some popularity on the interwebs lately, since his winning 2016 routine got stolen and re-uploaded by every single content-jacking account on Facebook and then spread far and wide. Raise your hand if you’ve had at least a half-dozen people post it on your timeline and ask you “Have you seen this!?”
Yep. Same here.
So, as long as we’re all thinking about Hajime and how sweet and awesome that kid is, we might as well enjoy his latest routine, fresh from 44Festival in Japan.
Yoyos used are the Something Phaser.
Masanobu Iwata sends in another report from 44FESTA!
Vol. 15 was held on November 22nd, and was the last regular FESTA event of the year.
This event’s mini-contest was probably my favorite so far, especially considering a lot of players these days have not experienced the annoying fun of auto-return yo-yos.
So what’s the “catch” here? The goal was to get a sleeper that lasts exactly 10 seconds, and if you’ve thrown these things before, you know there’s not much you can do about the sleeper time other than calibrating your throw.
And yet, World Champion Hajime Miura, and Makio Nakagawa both somehow managed to respectively get 10.07 and 9.93 seconds, with Makio winning the tie-breaker!
Next up was the freestyle contest, with World Champion Hajime Miura coming out on top. You could say having the World Champion compete here is unfair, but what if he freestyles in a different division?
Well, that’s still unfair!
Just kidding, we love having our minds blown by Hajime over and over!
Here are the final standing:
You can find all of the freestyles here.
And the year is not yet over for the 44FESTA crew and fans! 44FESTA VILLA, FESTA’s year-end party, will be held on December 27th in Fujisawa, Kanagawa. Entry fee is 1,500 yen (about 12 USD), and includes food and beverage!
There will be a non-sponsored player contest at the event as well, a great chance for those players to show off their skills and maybe catch a sponsor’s attention!
Finally, 44FESTIVAL WEST is also just around the corner, and will be held on December 19th in Osaka! Quite a busy month in Japan!
Iori Yamaki, Zach Gormley, and Shion Araya
Zach Gormley is the winner of the toughest and greatest yo-yo contest in history!
In a final round filled with favorites, Zach Gormley brought his best and was crowned the new 1A World Champion last night in Tokyo!
2A was equally exciting, with Shiji Saito winning the battle of World Champions against Shu Takada and Takuma Yamamoto!
In 3A, Hajime Miura had no trouble whatsoever, finishing almost 20 points ahead of runner-up Alex Hattori!
We also got a new 4A champion! Naoto Onishi won offstring in an incredibly balanced division!
In 5A champion, Jake Elliott, won by the tiniest of margins: just 0.03 points ahead of Takeshi Matsuura!
Finally, AP was a delight to watch, but ultimately it’s a competition, and Shaqler won with a jaw-dropping routine! Check the full results and commentary below!
With the new seeding rules in place, only the current World Champion was granted a spot in the final round. The result was a final round completely stacked with the best of the best who were able to make it through the qualifying rounds!
In such a high-level contest, predicting a winner was no easy task, reflected on the final scores, where there was only 1.5 point between the 2nd and 7th place finishers, but the online chatter correctly predicted Zach’s win! Another strong candidate was Iori Yamaki, who also had strong popular support, but ended up in 3rd place.
Perhaps the biggest surprise here is the young Shion Araya, who, despite competing at the World Yo-yo Contest for the first time, showed an amazing level of play and maturity, managing to do well not only in the qualifying rounds, but also in the grand final, earning a much-deserved second place!
Last year’s champion Gentry Stein had a great routine, but a single discard cost him the three points that would have put him immediately in second place, and perhaps even first considering the time spent switching yo-yos, and thus he finished 6th overall.
A few other strong contenders had discards as well. World Champions Marcus Koh, and Hiroyuki Suzuki, Ahmad Kharisma, Colin Beckford, and Ryota Ogi were all penalized for the yo-yo switch and ended up in the lower half of the placings.
János Karancz had several unbelievable tricks, as usual, but was unable to go as clean as he hoped, while Anthony Rojas had a fantastic routine, but ultimately without the trick density to achieve a high Technical Execution score.
A fierce battle between World Champions took place in 2A, with Shinji Saito emerging victorious with a high-level routine we expect from the now 13-time World Champion!
Shu Takada brought some very innovative tricks to the stage, that combined with his usual top-notch choreography and music use, were enough to bring his pre-deduction score on par with Takuma Yamamoto’s, even though Shu’s Technical Execution score was almost 8 points behind Takuma’s.
What ultimately decided the final placings was Takuma’s Detach penalty. Hiraku Fujii also suffered from penalties and was unable to place this year.
If there were any doubts about Hajime Miura’s supremacy after his fourth place finish at Japan Nationals, there surely are none left after his outstanding performance in Tokyo!
Finishing almost 20 points ahead of the second place with an unbelievable score of 96.5, Hajime Miura earns his second World Title and becomes a very young legend in 3A play!
In second and third places were US players Alex Hattori and Hank Freeman, respectively, both with very clean routines, but without the extra refinement and difficulty of Hajime’s freestyle.
Be sure to watch Patrick Borgerding’s routine as well! Pat himself stated his goal is not to win, but to bring insane tricks to the stage, and he did not disappoint, hitting all his bangers on the stage in Tokyo!
World Champion Minato Furuta had a very unfortunate run. His tricks were amazing, and he would have been a serious contender had it not been for two disastrous double discards that cost him 12 points in penalties, and a lot of downtime on stage.
Naoto Onishi won the 4A World Champion title in a division where the final standings were decided by the penalties!
While Naoto’s routine itself was completely clean and deserving of the title, it was Takumi Yasumoto’s 2 penalty point that knocked down the latter to second place, and amazingly, Rei Iwakura’s astonishing 6-point penalty that cost him the World Title!
The next spots were taken by the three American players. 2013 World Champion Michael Nakamura had a solid routine, but his Performance Evaluation scores prevented him from getting a better placing. Ben Conde was certainly the crowd favorite, and while he managed to hit his unbelievable tricks, they were not in large enough number to guarantee a better Technical Execution score. An epic performance, nonetheless!
Jake Elliott did it! The new World Champion becomes the man who beat Takeshi Matsuura in 5A! What everybody thought was impossible now becomes true as Jake Elliott raises the bar for 5A play, bringing a whole lot of new tricks to the division!
And check out the final score! This is the closest score ever to determine the World Champion! If this is any indication of the future, we can expect truly legendary contests with these two beasts of counterweight play!
On the human side of things, Sora Ishikawa repeats his third place finish from last year with another entertaining freestyle, followed by Hideo Ishida and Bryan Jardin, who went slightly less cleanly than they hoped.
Shaqler! Wow! The AP division this year was truly amazing, and every performance there deserves to be watched several times, but Shaqler’s freestyle is truly epic! Their 2010 routine is already a classic, but this takes their teamplay concepts and skills even further!
The addition of Shu Takada brought even more energy and acrobatics to the team, and making them only the second team ever to win two World Titles!
Shaqler also took home the Entertainment Award, while BeatPoint’s beatbox/yo-yo combo was awarded the Artistic Award, and Taiwan’s WHO Theatre got the Creativity Award for their fantastic team offstring performance!
By Steve Brown
Fist Salud knows what the deal is! This new trick compilation video features new work from John Ando, Yuuki Spencer, Shu Takada, Drew Tetz, Ayumu Harada, Dee, Igor Galiev, Koichiro Ueta, Hibari, Yoshinori Kawamura, Hajime Miura, Atsushi Yamada, Hank Freeman, Eiji Okuyama, Alex Garcia, Daiki Tanaka, and Petr Kavka. A truly all-star lineup!
Music is NSFW.
By Steve Brown
World Champion Hajime Miura turns the cute up to 11 in his latest “imitation” video, where he announces the names of well-known yoyo champions and then attempts to bang through some of their signature tricks. He gets through a LOT of them pretty well, definitely better than I probably could…and it’s a great example for up-and-coming players of how if you develop a unique style, even someone just doing a couple of your tricks will be easily recognizable.
By Steve Brown
44Clash held their pre-event to quality local players to this prestigious contest, and we’ve got video of all competitors!
Check out the Top 3 in each division below, and follow the links to see the rest of the players on the 44Clash YouTube channel.
By Steve Brown
The results are in, and Hajime Miura from Japan is the new 3A World Champion!
This year’s Asia Pacific Yo-yo Championship marked the 10th anniversary of the contest. The idea of a multi-national event was new back then, and we’re thrilled to see it bigger and better every year!
We have some results and freestyle videos, courtesy of C3yoyodesign!
Many had been wondering if Ahmad Kharisma’s win over Hiroyuki Suzuki and Christopher last year was an exception to the norm, but the Indonesian star proved he is among the best on the planet, and a contender for this year’s World Yo-yo Contest! Second place went to Iori Yamaki, with Hiroyuki Suzuki finishing third.
In 2A, Shinji Saito showed us he’s still very much the god of 2A, winning the old-schooler battle and finishing ahead of Hiraku Fujii and Liu Man Ki.
If 2A was all about veteran players, 3A gave us a glimpse of a very bright future, with Hajime Miura displaying an unbelievable level of control on stage!
Jeon Ji-Hwan won the 4A division with his usual flashy style, beating Chan Chun Hin and Sean Hung to take the title.
Finally, in 5A, Jaued Cervas, from the Philippines, beat Teeny Kai Zhang and Naoya Takeuchi to bring home the trophy!
Check the results below!
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