TwitchCon Amsterdam was a real red-letter day for the entire community of streaming service: the event was attended by the world's stars of streaming and esports, but one of the guests stood out from the rest. We are talking about Juan Hungrybox DeBiedma, who went through one of the most eventful paths in the industry and became a true legend of the Super Smash Bros. franchise. Streams Charts team had the honor of talking to one of the most successful and one of the most controversial members of the Melee community.
By the age of 29, Hungrybox has won dozens of titles in the most prestigious tournaments in the discipline and has become a real SSB star, gaining fame far beyond North America. In addition to esports, he has also found success in casual streaming. At the end of last year, Hungrybox became the most watched Twitch creator in Super Smash Bros games: his streams regularly attracted more than 2.2K concurrent viewers, and at the peak the audience reached 37K people.
Hungrybox has been performing since 2007 on the pro scene alone. Despite such a long period, he doesn’t get tired of the game at all. And all because of the unique mechanics that qualitatively distinguishes SSB from other fighting games: ‘The reason I chose it is that it’s a platform fighter, and other games of the genre are more traditional’, admits Hungrybox.
Hungrybox performs on the Super Smash Bros scene for 15 years now, and it seems that he can perform for the same amount more with his inexhaustible enthusiasm: the only condition is to have stong competitors, it ultimately moves the e-athlete forward:
‘I’m going to play until I’m the last standing God’.
One can make a dedicated encyclopedia from the list of Hungrybox victories. Some players can only dream of playing at CEO, DreamHack, EVO, Genesis and MLG, while Juan has 14 trophies of these series. Of course, victories are the most iconic moments for any athlete. Putting them aside, here's what Hungrybox admired the most about his phenomenal career:
‘Three most memorable moments besides wins? First is showing up to Genesis, meeting all the international players for the first time, and seeing the international community for the first time in general. Second is hosting my first big major tournament in Orlando with everyone coming together, it was a beautiful thing. And the last thing is probably getting to meet Reggie and other guys from Nintendo.’
Super Smash Bros games are hugely popular at homeland Japan, but they are even more successful on the other side of the Pacific Ocean: in the USA, SSB is rightfully considered one of (if not the most) popular esports discipline, which scene has grown thanks to the efforts of the community. Prime game tournaments attract tens and even hundreds of thousands of spectators, and this happens more in spite of than thanks to the developers from Nintendo, with which American SSB fans have a very strained relationship.
As many think in the community, Nintendo's total control over the events which can or for some reason can’t host SSB tournaments has greatly damaged the competitive scene. At the same time, the potential of the game is just colossal: fans of the game (and Hungrybox himself) will surely agree with that.
‘Other esports are being so successful in doing it, because they have developer support. We just need developer support. We need to bring money to major events for it to be nationally televised thing, and they are viewed by a lot of people already. Panda Cup are trying to do that stuff, so that’s good. But overall a lot more could be done: other scenes have proven that formula works.’
Hungrybox himself is also often the subject of criticism. This is understandable: such a successful and popular player will inevitably have both loyal fans and ardent haters. An esports athlete sometimes doesn’t mind adding fuel to the fire himself (some of his victory celebrations is just a single piece in the puzzle), but sometimes the criticism, as the player admits, is so sweeping that he several times thought about quitting esports for good:
‘I pretty much nearly quit once: i looked at my watch during the match and people were giving me shit for that. People really like to dog-pile and I attract a lot of controversy. I hate it about myself, but I kinda got used to it now: whatever happens now, I just brush it off. I do realize there’s like this mentality that comes with social media: people don’t really care any more what’s right or wrong, true or false, they just care about being loud. People are bloodthirsty, they want to be entertained, they want drama. It comes with a cost of other people’s mental health, like mine. It’s not easy, but it’s part of the job, unfortunately.’
Despite criticism and other obstacles, Hungrybox never gave up and deservedly entered the Melee pantheon of gods. One should note that he spent almost his entire career in one organization which is Team Liquid. While he started out as a regular player and aspiring streamer, he is now an integral part of the brand and he plays an important role in the organization he co-owned at the end of 2021:
‘I started as an e-athlete, as Azubu streamer for Team Curse. Then it became Team Liquid and everything started to be more official, bigger salary, more opportunities, more options to visit other places and so on. As time goes on and you have more success on the scene, you put more effort into the team, more ways to create conent, more ways to expand your brand, more ways to show who you are rather than just being a Smash player.
As I grew as a person and brand, Liquid helped me with that. They have me now more as an influencer rather than Smasher. I might be considered as a bridge to the companies that are not that familiar with esports, I’m sort of a guy in the middle, who can explain these things and show: this is what it’s like. Because of the experience I have in these different angles, Team Liquid value me for these reasons. It’s a mutual benefit, and it’s the only org I plan on being in forever.’
As journalists of theScore esports aptly noted, Hungrybox lived in the shadow of his rivals for a long time, but hard work and dedication not only helped him rise above the opponents, but also climb to a level inaccessible to them. There is no doubt that even after many years the Hungrybox will be one of the first names next to Super Smash Bros.
