Cody “iBDW” Schwab, a Fox main, is the newly ranked #84 on SSBMRank 2017. He hails from Queens, New York and is #9 on the New York City Power Rankings. I spoke with iBDW about his history with competitive Melee and his thoughts on the current meta.

What was your introduction to competitive Melee?

iBDW: A little bit of background, I graduated college this past May and in high school, a few of my friends were talking about EVO. I don’t really remember too much about it, but that’s the first time I ever heard of competitive Melee, I didn’t realize it was competitive up until that point. Then my cousin got into competitive Project Melee, I’m very close with my cousin. He doesn’t play too much anymore, he’s pretty much a casual at this point, but he was pretty good. As a kid, we always had a rivalry, he was way better at Brawl and I was way better at Melee, and I always said Brawl sucked. In retrospect, just not my type of game clearly, it doesn’t suck, but I didn’t like it as much.

But then when he started playing competitive Project Melee he got really good at Melee as well, and I was kind of like, “Oh wow! This is really cool, how did you do this?” and I just got really intrigued so I joined my school’s Smash Club. I guess that would have been January 2015, and I started playing casually a little bit. And then that May, there was a tournament, I was like, “Oh! I’ll see how good I am,” and I entered. I got like 5th. It was a terribly-ran tournament. It was double-elimination best-of-one up until top 8, and it was played on LCD TVs, it was really bad. But it was a frat tournament, I got like 5th or something as a casual and I was kind of salty, but I was like, “Huh, that was pretty fun,” and I just decided that I wanted to see how good I could get.

Did you start off playing Fox or did you switch over to him?

iBDW: I played Fox as a kid. I played Fox and Mario as a kid, but I had the most fun with Fox because he was so fast, so I just continued playing him because I wanted to play someone who was really fast. Got kind of lucky with my choice there.

What’s the origin of your tag?

iBDW: When I was 13, I played a lot of Xbox, and I was super into Halo and Call of Duty. So my tag was iBDoiNWorK, which I found pretty cringey at this point in my life. So when I came into Melee, I couldn’t figure out what tag I wanted so I just shortened it. If I had the option to redo it now I’d probably just make my tag Cody.

2017 was clearly a breakout year for you. Do you think your play dramatically improved, or do you think you got the chance to travel out and be seen more?

iBDW: My play definitely improved. I’m a very new player compared to most people, so my play definitely improved. I think the biggest thing was that I deal with clinical anxiety, and outside of one huge blip at Tipped Off where I had an anxiety attack during one of my sets, I think I was just able to deal with stress and anxiety in tournament better than I had been previously which allowed me to stay a lot more calm in tournaments. I think that was kind of my biggest improvement.

You competed in Rochester back when you were going to school there and in New York City where you are now, how would you compare those two scenes? Do you think your location has affected your ability to improve?

iBDW: Not as much as you would think. Rochester wasn’t a particularly strong scene. We had one really old-school player called JesiahTEG who was super good, but he was kind of inactive when I came back. He came out of retirement for a little bit and whupped me every time (this was when I was still pretty new), but we didn’t have anyone too good. I would say about eight months into playing Melee I was probably the best in Rochester at that point, or very close in contention for it to give a background on the skill level there. It wasn’t great. So it wasn’t the strongest region, but I think the fact that I had a weak region forced me onto Netplay which I think is just the best way to improve right now. I think if you’re going to improve fast, you kind of have to use it.

Is that how you tend to practice mostly? With Netplay and stuff like the 20XX Training Pack?

iBDW: I’m really bad about solo practice. I don’t do like any solo practice, I haven’t done solo practice in almost a year. I just play Netplay like all the time, and I try to very consciously think about things. Specifically, things that I noticed I’ve lost in tournament for, I try to really pay attention to those types of situations when I’m playing and figure out how to fix them.

Tristate has recently shown itself to be a very deep region with the rise of players like you, Kaeon, Darktooth, 2Saint, Zealous5000, and others. Have you seen Tristate improve dramatically over the past year or so, or do you think we’re just getting more exposure to those players?

iBDW: Oh no, I think we absolutely improved. All these players have started relatively recently, and I think a bunch of us just kind of had really good breakout years this year. I think we were underrated last year, but I wouldn’t say we were anywhere near this good last year.

Let’s talk about your Genesis run. You beat Lovage and Android, and you 3-0’d Gahtzu. Those are some pretty good wins to start the year off, were you confident going into these sets or were your wins more a surprise to you?

iBDW: I was pretty confident. Lovage, obviously he’s really good, I think a lot of people were kind of surprised at how highly he was ranked including him. Tristate’s all Foxes, so I’m very comfortable in the Fox ditto. I was reasonably confident going into that, I had some nerves, but they kind of went away when he was super late to the pool. I was like, “Ok, he clearly hasn’t even warmed up,” and then he wound up killing himself like three times in that set, so he clearly just didn’t warm up. He played better in Losers.

Android, I didn’t really know how I felt because obviously he gets a lot of really good Fox practice, but I feel like every time I’ve seen him really upset someone (outside of I think he beat Crush) was a like a floaty, and I really like the Sheik matchup, so I felt reasonably confident. I didn’t think I would favor myself but I was like, “I could definitely do it.” And then when I played Gahtzu, I felt very confident because I play with Smuckers all the time. I’ve played him, like, probably over ten times in tournament at this point, so I felt pretty confident going into that set that I could do well.

What would you say is your favorite matchup to play?

iBDW: Jigglypuff by far. My cousin who I told you got me into Melee, he was a Puff main, and then 2Saint became my best friend pretty quickly and my teammate, and he plays Puff, so my two main practice partners when I started were just Jigglypuffs who I played all the time.

What would you say is your hardest matchup at the moment?

iBDW: Depending on the day, Falco or Marth, just one of the two. I feel like I can be good at either matchup, but I can also just be terrible at either matchup. A lot of it is tournament, if I’m feeling really nervous I’m probably going to get wrecked by those two characters.

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

iBDW: I actually made a very conscious effort to not watch too many top players or try to mimic their playstyles. I’m very much a fan of just playing my own style. I just wanna get good my way, I wanna play the game my way. I don’t really wanna take too much from other people. I’ve taken a lot of Armada’s tech, but I don’t really think I play too much like him. I really like Plup’s Fox, if I had to pick a Fox to play like it would probably be his, I really like it. But in terms of playing close to anyone’s style, I don’t really think there’s anyone that I can relate to too well on that front.

Everyone wants to beat everyone they can obviously, but do you have a player or a matchup in particular you really want to face off against in bracket? Who’s next on your hit list?

iBDW: I don’t really have a “hit list,” I just kind of want to get as much experience as I can and play as many good players as I can and see how I can do against them. Obviously, since Puff’s my favorite matchup I would have to say Hungrybox, but he’s so good against Fox that is would be kind of a crapshoot. I would never say, “Oh, I’m gonna beat Hungrybox today.” That’s just not something I would say at my skill level, but if I had to pick a top 10 player, probably him because I love Puff.

You can follow iBDW on his Twitter, @iBDWSSBM and his Twitch, twitch.tv/ibdw.

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