Smash Bros. Player Sexually Assaults Female Competitor at Evo, is Dropped by Team and Sponsor
Image via Smashboards Games NewsAt the annual Evo fighting game tournament this past weekend, competitive Super Smash Bros. player Cristian “Hyuga” Medina (above, right) sexually assaulted another Smash Bros. competitor and commentator, Victoria “VikkiKitty” Perez. As a result, Medina’s sponsor and team VGBootCamp ended their relationship with him.
The incident occurred late Saturday night/early Sunday morning. Perez shared a statement about the events on Twitter. She wrote that Medina was drunk and alone, so her boyfriend decided to let him stay in their hotel room for the night.
“I fell asleep next my boyfriend on the bed and I woke up to Cristian in between my boyfriend and I, rubbing against me and sliding his hands up my shirt and another down my pants,” Perez wrote. She continued:
I told him to leave me alone and to get back on the floor, repeatedly. He’s drunk and doesn’t get off me so I say it even LOUDER until someone in my room woke up to see what was going on. That person, Stefan, gets up and tells me immediately to sleep on the other bed where he was on and I changed beds. 15 minutes pass and I have still not fallen back asleep before Hyuga slides between the person I was on the bed with and tries to do it once again before Nick Riddle woke up and kicked him out of the room. Again, this has never happened to me and I was frightened so after they kicked him out I started to break down in tears. Did my “friend” actually attempt doing this to me? Why wouldn’t he leave me alone? What if I was alone? We filed a police report.
Medina’s actions were brought to the attention of his sponsor, VGBootCamp. They decided to end their sponsorship, writing the following:
This afternoon we heard accusations that our player, “Hyuga”, groped a woman of the smash community sometime early this morning as she tried to sleep. After talking to all parties and witnesses involved we believe that these accusations are true. Although he was heavily intoxicated during the incident there is absolutely no excuse for his actions. Starting immediately, Hyuga will no longer be a representative of the VGBC pro team. We want to set a precedent for all teams and sponsored players in the smash community to say that these actions will not be glossed over and ignored.
Medina, who has since deleted his Facebook and Twitter accounts, tried to defend the sexual assault to Riddle in a private message, writing “I dont remember nothing.” Riddle shared the message on his Twitter, which you can see below.
— NickRiddle @ EVO (@VS_NickRiddle) July 17, 2016
Perez shared another post shortly after the previous. In it, she discussed deciding not to pursue legal action against Medina for fear of it negatively impacting her career.
I do not want this situation to dwell above my head for a long period of time. I made a tweet about the situation to spread AWARENESS. I do not want this to happen to ANYONE ELSE. The judgement of the community will take it’s turn with this situation and hopefully bring more awareness to tournament safety. If I go through with further legal action, I will never be allowed to go to another out of state tournament, again. Coming from a Hispanic family, they will never let me travel out of fear for my safety and I do not want to bring them any worry.
This isn’t even the first known time this year that a competitive fighting game player has sexually assaulted a woman at an event. In both cases, at the very least, tournament organizers or sponsors took action against the perpetrators. Female competitors and fans deserve safety and respect, and that will only happen if they feel safe coming forward when incidents like this occur and if action is then taken against the perpetrators. VGBootCamp’s desire to make it known that “these actions will not glossed over and ignored” is hopefully a sign of progress to come.