A year ago at the Battle Royal 2016 finals Team NINJA Creative Director Tom Lee said, "Next year's Battle Royal event will be an event you don't want to miss." As the year went on, members in the community couldn't help but wonder due to the intonation of Tom's speech if something big was planned or if it was just generic hype for a year long event filled with amazing competitive matches.
The journey to the Battle Royal 2017 finals was eventful, filled with upsets from South Killy defeating XCalibur BladeZ at Final Round, previous Battle Royal 2015 winner JC Akira taking the EVO Japan Pre-tournament, XCalibur BladeZ getting his run-back on Battle Royal 2016 winner Rikuto at Summer Jam 11, Hoodless finally taking the win after his die-hard training at The Fall Classic, and Snow defeating previous European champion Gehaktbal at the Republic of fighters.
The world's eyes were on Team NINJA as we rolled into NEC18 for the Battle Royal 2017 World Finals event. A day before the event...