Ezra Samsora Morris, better known as Samsora, is an American former

professional A professional is a member of a profession or any person who works in a specified professional activity. The term also describes the standards of education and training that prepare members of the profession with the particular knowledge and ski ...

''Super Smash Bros.'' player from

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U'' he had a number of strong performances but no major tournament victories and was ranked as the game's 22nd-best player of all time. After the release of ''

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate ''Super Smash Bros. Ultimate'' is a 2018 crossover fighting video game developed by Bandai Namco Studios and Sora Ltd. and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. It is the fifth installment in the ''Super Smash Bros.'' series, succeeding ...

'', he established himself as one of the best players in the world. He has won one major ''Super Smash Bros. Ultimate'' tournament, Shine 2019, and was ranked as the second best ''

'' player in the world in the Panda Global rankings for the second half of 2019. In both ''Smash'' games, he primarily utilizes

Princess Peach is a fictional character in Nintendo's Mario (franchise), ''Mario'' franchise, created by Shigeru Miyamoto and introduced in the 1985 original ''Super Mario Bros.'' installment. She is the Queen regnant, princess regnant and ruler of the Mushro ...

. In ''Wii U'', he used Rosalina and Luma and Zero Suit Samus as secondary characters. As the second best ''Ultimate'' player, he mains

, and uses Zero Suit Samus and Palutena as secondaries. On April 3, 2021, Samsora was indefinitely banned by the Super Smash Bros. community due to his involvement with scandals related to former player Zack "CaptainZack" Lauth, particularly with CaptainZack's initiation with romantic partnerships that consisted of several adults which violated

age of consent The age of consent is the age at which a person is considered to be legally competent to consent to sexual acts. Consequently, an adult who engages in sexual activity with a person younger than the age of consent is unable to legally cla ...

. Although Samsora was not accused of such a partnership, he was aware of parts of the facts and was banned for his perceived lack of transparency, logical inconsistency, and apathy towards the scandals.

Career

''Super Smash Bros. for Wii U''

Samsora's first major ''Super Smash Bros.'' result came at a Clutch City Clash, a regional tournament held in August 2016, where he eliminated reigning

Evo 2016 The 2016 Evolution Championship Series (commonly referred to as Evo 2016 or EVO 2016) was a fighting game event held in Las Vegas on July 15–17. Being hosted on the twentieth anniversary of the Evolution Championship Series, the event offered to ...

champion Elliot "Ally" Carroza-Oyarce from the tournament before losing to Yuta "Abadango" Kawamura in the grand finals. In the Panda Global Rankings, considered the most authoritative ranking of ''Smash for Wii U'' players, Samsora debuted at 29th in the edition covering the second half of 2016, owing in part to his results at Clutch City Clash as well as top 17 placings at two major tournaments. In January 2017 he took second in another minor tournament, Smash Conference LXIX, in what would wind up his highest placing in a tournament that year. While failing to secure a tournament win, Samsora placed highly in a number major ''Super Smash Bros. for Wii U'' tournaments in 2017, finishing tied for 5th at CEO Dreamland, tied for 33rd at Evo 2017, and tied for 9th at

DreamHack DreamHack is an ESL Gaming brand specializing in esports tournaments and other gaming conventions. It is recognized by the Guinness Book of Records and Twin Galaxies as being the world's largest LAN party and computer festival with the world' ...

Atlanta, among several other 7th and 9th-place results. He was ranked the 24th and 22nd best player in the Panda Global Rankings for the first and second half of 2017, respectively. 2018 was Samsora's most successful year in ''Super Smash Bros. for Wii U'' competition. He began the year taking third at the PAX Arena invitational at PAX South 2018. He would go on to make strong showings in several major tournaments; taking 7th at MomoCon 2018 and SwitchFest, 9th at Frostbite 2018, Get On My Level 2018, and 2GG: Hyrule Saga, and 17th at CEO 2018, all in the first half of the year. In addition, he won two minor tournaments, Saints Gaming Live 2018 and Denti's Bizarre Adventure 8. As a result of his strong performances, he jumped 10 places in the Panda Global Rankings, to 12th best in the world. In the second half of the year, Samsora took 7th at Low Tier City 6, 5th in DreamHack Atlanta 2018, and second in Super Smash Con 2018, where he lost to Leonardo "MkLeo" López Pérez. In December 2018, Panda Global released a ranking of the top 100 ''Smash for Wii U'' players from the game's release through the release of ''Super Smash Bros. Ultimate'', which ranked Samsora 22nd. Throughout ''Super Smash Bros. for Wii U'', Samsora consistently used

as his primary character. He occasionally used Rosalina and Luma, and more rarely Zero Suit Samus, as secondaries.

''Super Smash Bros. Ultimate''

''Super Smash Bros. Ultimate'' was released in December 2018, and Samsora tied for 5th in one of its first tournaments, Let's Make Moves, held at the end of that month. Days later, multi-esport organization announced that they had signed Samsora as their first ''Ultimate'' player. Samsora competed in eight of the eleven major tournaments held in the first half of 2019, finishing 2nd Smash 'N' Splash 5, 3rd at

Genesis 6 Noach, Noiach, Nauach, Nauah, or Noah (, Hebrew for the name "Noah", the third word, and first distinctive word, of the parashah) is the second weekly Torah portion (, ''parashah'') in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading. It constitutes . The ...

, and rounding out the results with two 4th-place finishes, a 5th-place finish, two 9th-place finishes, and a 13th-place finish. He also won a minor tournament, Kawaii Kon 2019. In the inaugural Panda Global Rankings Ultimate, Samsora ranked 4th behind MkLeo, Gavin "Tweek" Dempsey, and Tyler "Marss" Martins. Samsora's results continued to improve going into the second half of the year. In July, he won the minor tournament Defend The North 2019. August was the most significant month of results in his career. At the beginning of the month he took 4th at Evo 2019, the largest offline tournament by number of participants in ''Smash Bros.'' franchise history. A week later he took 2nd at Super Smash Con 2019, defeating MkLeo in the winners' finals round before losing to him in the grand finals. At the end of the month, he won Shine 2019, again facing MkLeo in the grand finals and this time emerging victorious. Shine was his first premier-tier tournament win. Samsora took 2nd place at two other major tournaments in the months that followed, DreamHack Atlanta 2019 and Smash Ultimate Summit 2. In the second bi-annual ranking for ''Smash Ultimate'', Samsora rose to 2nd place. Aside from one tournament where he finished tied for 13th, he took tied for 7th or better at every event he attended over the second half of the year. In 2020, Samsora finished tied for 9th in one of the first tournaments of the year, Let's Make Big Moves, before winning the minor tournament Tampa Never Sleeps 8 later that month. At the end of January he took 3rd at

Genesis 7 Genesis, stylized as GENESIS, is a series of annual ''Super Smash Bros.'' tournaments occurring in the San Francisco Bay Area of the US state of California. The first Genesis tournament took place in 2009 in Antioch at the Contra Costa County Fa ...

, then tied for 13th at Frostbite 2020 the following month. Frostbite was the last major tournament held before Panda Global Rankings suspended the 2020 competitive season due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified ...

. While CEO Dreamland 2020 no longer counted towards the rankings, the event still took place, though with a significant number of player cancellations. Samsora won the event, then donated a portion of his prize money back to the tournament organizer, who had announced that the tournament was in dire financial straits due to the loss of revenue from the cancellations. Due to the pandemic, most of the subsequent tournaments scheduled for the first half of the year were cancelled or moved online. Samsora entered the

Hungrybox Juan Manuel DeBiedma (; born June 21, 1993), better known by his alias Hungrybox, is an Argentine- American professional ''Super Smash Bros.'' player and streamer. Recognized as one of the best and most successful ''Super Smash Bros. Melee'' pla ...

-organized The Box tournament in May, but finished outside the top 50. As with ''Smash for Wii U'', Samsora uses Princess Peach as his primary character. His secondary characters in ''Ultimate'' are

Princess Daisy is a fictional character in the ''Mario'' series of video games. She debuted in 1989's ''Super Mario Land'' as the ruler of Sarasaland. Described as a tomboy, she used to be rumored to be Luigi's love interest, similarly to Princess Peach b ...

and Zero Suit Samus.

Ban from competitive play

In September 2020, someone claiming to be a friend (Tamim "tamim" Omary, formerly known as "Mistake") of Samsora, as well as CaptainZack, the minor who had been involved in sexual misconduct allegations against fellow pro Smash player

Nairo Nairo is a given name. Nairo may refer to: * Nairo Quintana (born 1990), Colombian cyclist * Nairo (gamer), the gamertag of American gamer Nairoby Quezada {{Short pages monitor