Mang0 to take break from competitive Melee, cites demotivation

The return of Pound brought plenty of incredible storylines to the forefront of Melee. William "Leffen" Hjelte's first offline open-bracket tournament in North America since the COVID-19 pandemic started, Zain Naghmi's quest to cement himself as the undisputed best in the world, and the return of Juan "Hungrybox" Debiedma to the place where the now-iconic "crab incident" occurred in 2019. 

It was also the perfect opportunity for Joseph "Mang0" Marquez to bounce back after a shockingly underwhelming performance at Genesis 8. In the Church that Mang0 built, the C9 idol failed to make it to Top 8 for the first time, bowing down at 9th, getting 3-0'd by Hungrybox in the process.

Despite a considerably fewer number of entrants, Pound was still a stacked event on the Melee side of things, with Mang0 being sent to losers before Top 16 by Shephard "Fiction" Lima.

In losers, Mang0 would fail to get past Peach veteran Arjun "Llod" Malhotra, ending his run at 13th, even lower than his Genesis performance.

Is Mang0 retiring from Melee?

After being eliminated, Mang0 said on social media that he had lost the drive to compete, as things that used to fuel him made him feel indifferent. 

I came to pound wanting to lose to see how I would feel. I gave 0 f*cks when I lost. Went into every set wanting it to be over, people sh*tting on me after I under perform gets me going... it did nothing," he tweeted out.

Mang0 confirmed that Summit 13 will be his last event "for a while," as he's already qualified, selected as one of the five invited players.

Summit 13, a 16-player Melee invitational, is scheduled to be played between 12th and 15th May.

It'll remain to be seen if Mang0 follows up on his tweet and takes a break from competing. As a content creator, the C9 sponsored player is one of the few Melee stars that's successfully diversified outside the competitive fighter.

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His Twitch stream, where he's usually seen playing a wide variety of games like Mario Kart 8, Valorant, CS:GO, League of Legends, and of course, Smash, is about to reach 500k followers, with Mang0 consistently surpassing the 10k subs threshold. 

If the 30-year-old does decide to take a step back from competition, he'll join Adam "Armada" Lindgren, Jason "Mew2King" Zimmerman, and Kevin "PPMD" Naney as the Gods of Melee that have left Melee behind, leaving only Hungrybox as the only active God. 

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Featured image courtesy of BeyondTheSummit.