Kurtis “Moky” Pratt, a Fox main, is the newly ranked #96 on SSBMRank 2017. He hails from Ontario, Canada and is #5 on the Ontario Power Rankings. I spoke with Moky about his history with competitive Melee and his thoughts on the current meta.

What was your introduction to competitive Melee?

Moky: I actually saw the Smash Bros. Documentary first. I’ve been playing casually my whole basically, and then when I saw the documentary I thought that this was something I kind of want to do, and that’s basically it. There’s nothing too interesting. I saw that and then I got into it and I went to Get On My Level 2014.

What drew you to Fox as your character?

Moky: When I started off I actually mained Captain Falcon, just because, I don’t know, I always thought he was super cool and he had a lot things to just style with a lot, but then as I played him for like a year and a half I noticed that I just had more fun practicing tech skill with Fox, and I wasn’t putting much time into practicing anymore, so I figured I would just switch since there was more stuff I could do to improve with Fox because he has so much other technical things I could do in the game. So I kind of just switched to him, and I never really looked back since.

What’s the origin of your tag?

Moky: So I had a Playstation account, actually, and it had a stupid name, TheMonkeyBlade, because I made it when I was 11 I think. It was around the time when there were a lot of stupid memes where you would shorten the names, so people started calling me “Moky” instead of Monkey, and then it became like a nickname. I figured that it’s not actually a word so no one else is gonna have it really, and it’s short with four letters/characters so I can have it as a tag in game, which I don’t really do but at the time I thought it was a good idea, so I just stuck with that.

So you come from Ontario, it’s a region that’s recently been on the rise with players like Ryan Ford and n0ne rising at the top level, but there are also a lot of players like you, Trulliam, and Coffeeblack sort of on the come-up as well. Have you noticed your region improving, or do you just think we’re just starting to see more of you guys traveling out to more tournaments?

Moky: We’re for sure improving a lot, but I do think a lot of it is just us traveling out to tournaments because I know for me, I’ve been pretty decent for a while. I’ve always been bringing it close with all of the guys you just mentioned, but I haven’t had the opportunity to travel out until Big House 7, so now I’m starting to get out-of-region wins as well as in-region, and of course our whole region has been improving. Ryan Ford has been doing amazing this year as compared to last year, same with n0ne as well, because when he first came to Canada he was dropping sets to a lot of random people, but now obviously he’s like top 20.

You had a pretty quick rise from not being PR’d at all in Ontario to making top 100 all within two years. Any idea why you were able to improve so fast?

Moky: I’m not too sure honestly, I just kind of played the game a lot, and I just think it had to do with me never losing interest in the game. Even now I feel like I’m one of the few people in my region who would be content just waking up, playing all day, and then sleeping. So I think it just has to do with me loving the game so much and just being able to put so much time into playing it.

Let’s talk about your Genesis run. You beat Cactuar at the same tournament where he beat Kels, Drephen, and 3-0’d KJH, and you had one of the biggest upsets of the tournament by beating ChuDat. How do you feel about your play in these sets? Were you confident going into them or were your wins more of a surprise?

Moky: Going into Cactuar, I knew how hard it was going to be. It was kind of a weird set as well because I know I took game one barely, and then he kind of messed me up, I think he 3-stocked me game two, and then I did the same back to him the final game. Going into it I knew Cactuar was going to be pretty hard, so I wasn’t too sure, I wasn’t too too confident against him, but I knew I could do it. Versus ChuDat going into it I knew it was going to be 50-50 because I play with Fork all the time, he lives about 10 minutes away from me. He’s really good, I’ve played him like every week since I started out basically, so going into it I knew that me versus ChuDat would be at least super close.

What’s your favorite matchup?

Moky: I like to ditto a lot, just Fox dittos. I’d say that’s just my favorite matchup, Fox dittos, and then my other good matchups are probably Ice Climbers of course, I’m not bad versus Captain Falcon.

Do you think that’s why some of your biggest wins, Cactuar and Colbol, were both Fox dittos? Is that just a matchup you feel comfortable in?

Moky: Yeah I think it’s one of the matchups I play the most because in the region I live in, I live about an hour out of Toronto, so we have our own weeklies in everything, and most of the other players play Fox. Obviously they’re not on the same level as Colbol or whatever but they all play a different Fox so I feel like I get bits of every Fox when I go to that weekly, and then I can piece it together and it works out when I play really good players.

What do you think is your hardest matchup right now?

Moky: I would say Puff, I think. I’ve dropped sets to a lot of Puffs that are considered pretty big upsets when I lose to them. I have a lot of trouble playing against Puff.

What players if any do you think you take inspiration from with your gameplay?

Moky: When I first started playing I liked Hax a lot, his Falcon and Fox. People would call me the Canadian Hax because I switched from Falcon to Fox and I played the same colors. I think nowadays I like Leffen’s Fox a lot, and Crush’s as well.

Everyone wants to beat anyone they can obviously, but who’s next on your hit list? Are there any players or matchups that you wanna see yourself improve against?

Moky: My main goal for this year is to make more upsets in more character matchups, so I want to beat more Marths, Puffs, Sheiks, because I feel like those are matchups where I can drop sets to some players, so I want to get better at that and then take sets off top 50 players with those characters. Players I really wanna beat are just whoever, I don’t really care who it is I just want to be able to go a tournament and do really well and honestly win.

You talked about your difficulties in the Puff matchup, is Legend one of those players you’ve been meaning to play more against? I know you’ve had some wins against him in the past.

Moky: Yeah I want to play with him for sure, I think I’m up 2-0 against him this year but they’re always really close sets. I want to play against him a lot to learn the matchup, but he still lives in Montreal so it’s pretty hard to get up to play him.

You can follow Moky on his Twitter, @Moky_Dokie and his Twitch, twitch.tv/moky_dokie.

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