YoYo Related News From Around The World
Recess finally dropped the new Komodo, a signature model for Indonesian yoyo champion Ahmad Kharisma! Players have been waiting patiently for the Komodo to be available and to celebrate the release we’ve got a new video from Recess team members Kenta Kushiro, Shota Saga, and Kazuki Morii.
Yoyo used is the Recess Komodo.
Check out some great raw footage of Ahmad Kharisma going hard at the 2015 World YoYo Contest in Tokyo. Are you a fan of Ahmad? Of course you are. Because he’s rad. Enjoy!
Ever try and run through your yoyo tricks with your weak hand? Always hilarious. Watch as Ben Conde and Ann Connolly struggle through a couple of their favorites while in Tokyo for the Throwdown contest.
Yoyos used are the Basecamp Jackknife and YoYoFactory Flight.
Hassy from 44FESTA sends word about the PROJECT2015 wrap-up report.
PROJECT2015 was 44FESTA’s contribution to the 2015 World Yo-yo Contest, held last year in Tokyo.
In addition to helping promote the contest, the crew was also present on the contest floor running side events like the 44CLASH Battle Tournament, and the 44FESTA game booth.
44FESTA leader Masanobu Iwata
FESTALAND, the game booth, was super popular among attendees, and featured traditional Eastern and Western carnival games like ring-toss, goldfish (or in this case bouncy-ball) fishing, and shooting range.
Another hugely successful side event was of course the 44CLASH Battle Tournament, featuring some of the most creative and acrobatic yo-yo players from around the globe.
The event was led by Fist Salud’s leader and 44CLASH organizer Dee:
MC Dee
The Battle Tournament was of course hugely popular, and featured names like János Karancz, Tsubasa Onishi, Rei Iwakura, and the eventual winner, Paul Kerbel.
Be sure to check out PROJECT2015’s event report with lots more pictures. The crew worked hard for month to help make Tokyo 2015 the greatest yo-yo contest ever held and it shows!
Whether you missed the 2015 World YoYo Contest in Tokyo or were lucky enough to attend, this video should pretty well do the trick for you. Tons of great yoyo tricks from some of the absolute best in the game…Christopher Chia, Shu Takada, Shaqler, Ky Zizan, Colin Beckford, Rei Iwakura, Hank Freeman, and many, many more!
Produced by Burnin’ Berlin x Fist Salud.
What major yoyo contest is complete without a recap video from our favorite lil’ Orca, Harrison Lee!? Harrison’s view of the 2015 World YoYo Contest is Tokyo is charming and perfect, and after all the fantastic footage I’ve seen of this event so far THIS is the one that make me tear up a little about missing the contest. 🙁
Thanks Harrison, for another beautiful view of the 2015 World YoYo Contest.
YoYofficer got in some great filming with their team in Japan during the 2015 World YoYo Contest…check out some solid play by Ma HaiLin (China), Pisco OuYang (China) and Ryan Lim (Malaysia).
Yoyos used are the YoYofficer Quash and YoYofficer R (Proto).
Jeffrey Pang just dropped what is quite possibly the greatest post-contest recap video I’ve ever seen for the 2015 World YoYo Contest in Tokyo, Japan. The filming, the editing, the music are all perfect and Jeffrey is the kind of guy who knows how to be where the fun is happening. I missed the contest but after watching this video I feel like I could tell you all about it. Beautiful work.
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!
The player order for the grand finals of the 2015 World Yo-yo Contest is now available on the contest’s website!
All divisions start with the last player qualified for the finals and finish with last year’s champion.
The contest starts with 4A, followed by 5A and AP in the morning, and resuming with 3A, 1A, and 2A in the afternoon.
The the greatest yo-yo contest of all time is coming to an end! Follow the live stream and don’t miss any of the action!
The 2015 World Yo-yo Contest reaches its final stage with a very strong roster and a few upsets! The semi-final round was a real treat, and we now have the complete list of contestants for the grand finals!
A very tough round where players showed great preparation! Most went very clean, making it very hard to predict the outcome! The biggest let downs here were certainly Christopher Chia, whose control was lacking, and Paul Kerbel, who was unable to secure a good Technical Execution score.
We do get a nice and diverse set of players joining Gentry Stein for the finals, however, with established competitors and newcomers from around the globe!
World Champions Hiroyuki Suzuki, Marcus Koh, and János Karancz all secured a spot in the finals, as well as a very strong set of younger players: Ryuichi Nakamura and Shion Araya, who qualified in the first two places, Yamato Murata, who had a very solid routine, young Czech marvel Jakub Dekan, and Colin Beckford, coming all the way from the wildcard round to secure the last spot in the final round!
Check the full list below. It’s safe to say this is the strongest 1A finals in history!
No surprises in 2A, where World Champions Shinji Saito and Shu Takada top the ranking. Tomoyuki Kaneko also had a strong routine and ended up ahead of Hiraku Fujii.
It’s the first time Shinji Saito and Takuma Yamamoto will go against each other at the Worlds finals since 2011, when Shinji won his last title.
Also worth noting is the presence of both Chan Chun Hay and Liu Man Ki from Hong Kong in the finals.
1A and 2A scores can be found here.
The 3A final round deserves a lot of attention this year! In addition to 3-time World Champion Hank Freeman, who barely made it due to a discard, we’ll also get to see current Japanese champion Tomoya Kurita, 2010 World Champion Minato Furuta, and both Patrick Borgerding and Ng Wang Kit, who are not afraid to pull risky moves on stage.
But the star of the semi-final round was Alex Hattori, who showed impressive calm and consistency to top the list ahead of the equally strong Japanese roster!
Unlike previous years, there are no favorites here, and Hajime Miura will have to work extra hard if he wants to add a second World title to his collection!
Despite Bryan Figueroa’s absence, the USA are very well represented in this division, with all three American players (Michael Nakamura, Zac Rubino, and Ben Conde) securing a spot in the final round.
The quality of the players in this division is unbelievable, with no less than four players getting a 10 in Execution, and Ben Conde’s routine was truly exceptional, scoring 38.5 out of 40 evaluation points!
Do these players have what it takes to dethrone Rei Iwakura? We are about to find out!
Another brilliant display by Bryan Jardin in the semi-final round! The US player tops the list of players who will face Takeshi Matsuura in the finals with a very comfortable margin, followed by last year’s runner-up Jake Elliott, who, despite having an early restart, still managed to qualify in second place.
World Champion Tyler Severance was unable to qualify and will be missed in the final round, but we still get a quality roster with some of the best in Japan, including Yoshihiro Abe, Sora Ishikawa, and Hideo Ishida.
Unlike the other divisions, where it’s hard to pick a favorite, Takeshi Matsuura is probably still at the top of everyone’s bets in 5A, and the other players will have to pull some big surprises in order to beat the six-time World Champion.
Scores for 3A, 4A, and 5A can be found here.
Finals start at 10:30AM Japan time (1:30AM GMT), be sure to catch the live stream to follow the action!
Another busy and exciting day awaits players and visitors tomorrow at the World Yo-yo Contest in Tokyo! The complete freestyle order can be found on the official website.
The semi-final round this year is where things get really serious, as only last year’s World Champions are seeded into the final round. All national and continental champions, in addition to the players qualified from the preliminary round, will have to prove their worth in this round.
These are some of the highlights in each division:
48 players still remain in this division, and only the top 17 will join Gentry Stein in the final round. We saw great freestyles in the preliminaries, including a fantastic show by Shion Araya, but him and the other players from today will face tough competition. Among those seeded into the semi-final round are World Champions Hiroyuki Suzuki, János Karancz, Marcus Koh, last year’s runner up and 5A beast Takeshi Matsuura, Asian Champions Iori Yamaki and Ahmad Kharisma, European Champion Jakub Dekan and Mexican duo Paul Kerbel and Luis Enrique Villasenor. There are more favorites than spots in the final round!
In addition to Hiraku Fujii, who dominated the preliminary round, we’ll also see the legend Shinji Saito, and Shu Takada competing in the semi-finals, and they should be among everyone’s favorites. Can the foreigners prevent an all-Japan 2A final round? Hong Kong veterans Liu Man Ki and Chan Chun Hay definitely have a chance, but it’s not going to be easy!
With so many great 3A players competing, it’s hard to tell who can make it to the final round, but we have great hopes of seeing great shows from Patrick Borgerding and Ng Wang Kit, players who are not afraid to pull super risky bangers on stage! They will need every bit of concentration to go against super consistent players like Mizuki Takimoto, Taichiro Higashi, and Hank Freeman!
A couple of World Champions failed to qualify for the semi-final round, and now Michael Nakamura is the only one competing for a spot in the final round, but even without the former champions, the roster here is stacked, with Ben Conde, Quentin Godet, Han Sanprasert, and Zac Rubino always bringing their best to the stage!
The American players are on the spotlight in the 5A semi-finals, with World Champion Tyler Severance, last year’s runner-up Jake Elliott, and the winner from the preliminary round, Bryan Jardin, all with great chances of making it to the final round. Hideo Ishida and Yoshihiro Abe should be Japan’s best bets here. Also worthy of notice is Mexico’s Betty Gallegos. Tyler Severance’s protege is the only female player in the semi-final round! Go Betty!
The Women’s Division will also be held tomorrow, by the way, and it’s quickly becoming a very serious division, with 21 players competing in a preliminary round to select the 10 finalists!
Be sure to check the live stream tomorrow!
What a day! The second day of the World Yo-yo Contest in Tokyo is now over and we’re reaching the decisive stages of the competition!
The number of players was again significantly thinned down, and unlike yesterday, the preliminary round does include evaluation scores, so proper freestyle skills were required in order to live another day!
Here are the qualified players in each division:
The toughest division, as usual, with only 23 out of 93 players making it to the next round. Shion Araya, C3yoyodesign player from Hokkaido, took first place, followed by CLYW’s Ayumu Harada, and sOMEThING’s Christopher Chia. Christopher and Jeremy Tan were the two Singaporeans surviving the prelims.
Also with two players making it to the semi-finals is USA, with Colin Beckford from Team Duncan earning a respectable 9th place, and Werrd’s Eric Tran-Ton in 21st. China also has two players among the top players in this round, with Chen Yang, and Weichuan Wang. Slusny’s Matous Tomes, from the Czech Republic was the only European among the qualified players. Other foreigners making it were Benson Fok, from Hong Kong, and Arif Rhamadan, from Indonesia.
Names like Yusuke Otsuka, Ryota Ogi, Akitoshi Tokubuchi, and Shinya Kido come as no surprise, but we are also excited to see “Yo-yo Baby” Kazuya Murata showing he can compete with the big kids!
With so few spots, it’s no surprise that some of the crowd favorites failed to move ahead, including Palli, Zhao Chen, and Paolo Bueno.
The full preliminary ranking for 1A can be found here.
No surprises at the top of the list in 2A, as Hiraku Fujii finishes over 10 points ahead of the second place. It’s also no surprise that the list of players qualifying for the semi-finals only includes Japanese players, but it’s great to see that a new generation of 2A players is now showing great maturity, and is able to compete against the more seasoned players. The only disappointment here is Koichiro Ueta, who had a double discard that cost him a spot in the next round.
Only seven players made it to the semi-final round in 3A, and we can expect a fantastic round tomorrow, as Takumi Yasumoto and Minato Furuta top today’s results! Elliot Ogawa, the sole US player, earned a respectable 3rd place, preventing a Japanese clean sweep!
Full results for 2A and 3A can be found here.
Takumi Yasumoto is on fire! Not only he qualified in first place in 3A, but he also tops the 4A list! We’ll definitely keep an eye on him tomorrow!
4A is the second largest division, with 34 players in the preliminary round, and while we are excited about showmen Ben Conde and Futoshi Maruyama making it to the next round, we are also sad to see World Champions Tsubasa Onishi, and Naoto Okada failing to advance. US Champion Bryan Figueroa will also be missed in the semi-final round, as mere 0.6 points prevented him from advancing. That these guys did not make it proves how advanced competitive 4A has become!
If you ever wondered how clean your tricks need to be in order to compete at the World level, Bryan Jardin’s routine from yesterday is all you need to see. With 9.5 in Cleanliness, and a perfect 10 in Execution, Bryan shows hard practice pays off handsomely! Oh, he also had 9.5 in Music Use!
And speaking of Bryan Jardin, the other Duncan team members also did great, with young Yoshihiro Abe coming in 2nd place, and Takayuki “Marron” Kuriyama in 4th, right behind the trick artist Sora Ishikawa.
Hiroyasu “Pon” Ishihara, who led the Wildcard round yesterday, barely made it to the semi-finals, as a discard put him as the 8th and last player to qualify. 5A legend Shingo Terada failed to move ahead, but we feel blessed to have been able to see him on the stage once again!
4A and 5A full results can be found here.
Join us again tomorrow for even more World Yo-yo Contest!
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)