CEO Recap: Kola Claims The Belt
As the Smash scene prepares to shift its focus to Florida ahead of Smash World Tour to close out the year, Community Effort Orlando 2021 this past weekend may have served as the perfect palate cleanser. Even with a bevy of last-minute dropouts and DQs amongst the top seeds of the event, CEO 2021 still managed to host quite the show, as those the north of 700 entrants that made the trip to the Wyndham Orlando Resort International clawed tooth and nail for Smash’s coolest piece of hardware: the CEO Championship Belt (and some money, but who cares about that?).
As the Smash scene prepares to shift its focus to Florida ahead of Smash World Tour to close out the year, Community Effort Orlando 2021 this past weekend may have served as the perfect palate cleanser. Even with a bevy of last-minute dropouts and DQs amongst the top seeds of the event, CEO 2021 still managed to host quite the show, as those the north of 700 entrants that made the trip to the Wyndham Orlando Resort International clawed tooth and nail for Smash’s coolest piece of hardware: the CEO Championship Belt (and some money, but who cares about that?).
Florida’s homefield advantage could only do so much to prevent outsiders from making it to the big stage come Sunday. Once the dust settled following Top 24, entering the ring for Grand Finals were representatives of Georgia and France, and the de facto top seeds of the event: original 4th seed Kolawole “” Aideyan 
of Moist Esports and 7th seed William “” Belaïd 
of Solary.
Kola looked like a man possessed through the entirety of Grand Finals, retaining the momentum from his brief stint in losers to power through the first set. Even Gluto pulling off what was arguably the comeback of the year did little slow him down on this way to a 3-1 bracket reset, and although the second set of Grand Finals was technically closer, going to 5 games instead of 4, Kola still found himself the winner of his first career major victory despite his adversary's best efforts, as Glutonny produced one of the clips of the year to close out the second game of the first set of Grand Finals.
Florida native Antony “” Hoo 
came tantalizingly close to being able to represent his home state for Grand Finals. Some would argue that Mute even looked good enough to win the tournament after making it to Winners Finals generally unscathed, taking out 
, 
, 
, and Kola in the process. After falling 3-1 to Glutonny in Winners Finals, MuteAce fell victim to the aforementioned Kola runback in Losers Finals 3-2. Taking into consideration the previous placings at big events MuteAce has attended post-timeskip, including a massive losers run to 13th at the recent Mainstage 2021, a bronze medal at one of the year’s biggest events should have him as the clear frontrunner for the title of best Peach.
Editor's note: GGs
FURIA’s Griffin “Fatality” Miller had one of the more admirable runs at CEO, culminating in a 4th place finish when all was said and done. After a close call with 
in Pools, he regrouped briefly before falling to 
2-0 in Top 48. From there, he became the shark in the water, picking off 
, 
, 
, ESAM, and 
before someone finally intervened, with Kola handling him in Losers Semis.
His 10-2 set record was best only by 2 competitors: Zomba, one of New York’s finest young talents, who finished 5th with a 11-2 record after an early loss to JMafia, and Kola, the Grand Champion, who tallied 12 set wins.
This is the part of the show I usually dedicate to the most confounding development at any given event. This time around, solo Villager narrowly missing out on Top 8 takes the cake. The artist formerly known as fuji, now 
, seeded 52nd out of 777 competitors, took full advantage of some of the most ravenous crowd support in all of Smash, as CFL cheered them on to a 13th place finish, good for a massive +4 Seed Performance Rating.
JAVI beat in pools right before losing out to 
and being placed in losers bracket to start Top 96. JAVI then immediately made a run for the belt, sacrificing Southeast natives , 
, 
, and in the process before becoming the sacrifice themselves in Top 16, losing to 
.
