Image: NetherRealm
When popping off goes wrong.
In a surprising turn of events, a professional player at CEO 2024’s Mortal Kombat 1 tournament has managed to lose quite a bit of money despite his big win. Player Alex ‘Dyloch’ Ruiz landed the finishing blow on his opponent Rewind at the end of the tournaments’ Winners Bracket, before picking up his chair and hurling it off the stage, inadvertently smashing a light fixture worth $3000 in the process.
That’s a fatality.
Mortal Kombat tournament winner executes a $3000 pop-off
Mortal Kombat professional player Alex ‘Dyloch’ Ruiz won the Mortal Kombat 1 tournament at the CEO 2024 fighting game championships, but his victory came with rather expensive consequences. As Dyloch stood up to celebrate his win against opponent Rewind, he ‘popped off’ - a term used to describe showing excitement after a big win - by flinging his chair off the stage and breaking a $3000 light fixture.
Despite how wild that sounds, the pop-off really wasn't that exciting to watch happen live:
As seen in the above video, Dyloch’s chair smashed a light fixture outside of the stage, visibly shattering glass in the process. CEO 2024 organiser Alex Jebailey wasn’t happy about it either, remarking on Twitter/X that Dyloch might have to pay for the broken equipment:
He also tweeted that “If one more person pops off throwing anything you will be banned from any event I ever do. This is a final warning to anyone in the future. Do not throw things.” Dyloch eventually won the Mortal Kombat 1 grand final and took home just $565 of prize money, which means that he might actually come out of the tournament with negative winnings. Jebailey himself confirmed that the broken light fixture cost $2,992:
If the light fixture is repairable, or Jebailey has some form of insurance for the event to cover the cost of replacing it, Dyloch might still have a chance of keeping a slice of that prize money. For now, this seems to be one of the most unnecessarily expensive pop-offs of recent history.
