Professional Super Smash Bros. Melee player Adam “Armada” Lindgren, widely considered to be one of the best to ever play the game, has announced his retirement from competitive singles tournaments. The announcement came via a video on Lindgren’s YouTube channel, as well as an accompanying tweet.
Lindgren says in his video that this decision was a difficult one for him to make, but one he felt was necessary. He says that motivation issues have plagued him throughout his career, but now they are “much worse than before.” He describes the sense of dread and almost physical sickness that came with entering a new tournament and cites these as further reasons for his retirement.
Lindgren knows that his exit from competitive singles play will likely upset many of his fans, but he defended his decision to leave.
“Trust me when I say I hate making people disappointed, but if I keep going on like I am now, I would not make anyone more disappointed than myself, and I can’t let myself do that. [...] I hope all of you guys can, at the very least, respect my decision, even if you are not enjoying the decision. That’s basically all I’m asking for.”
Worse, Lindgren said that he simply doesn’t have any more goals to complete in solo competition.
“During my career, I’ve had smaller goals, one step at a time,” he said. “Sometimes you have set backs of course, but you have small goals you want to achieve. Right now I don’t really have that. At all. I have done everything I want to do. I wanted to be the greatest of all time, and personally, I would say I feel like I have done that.”
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While this may seem like a bold claim, the truth is that his competitive record backs it up. It’s hard to find any player who has won quite as often as Lindgren since his career began in 2009. Across the 39 major tournaments he’s played in that time, Lindgren has never finished outside of the top four and has won an astounding 21 of those tournaments, along with 13 second-place finishes. In other words, for the better part of a decade, no matter which major Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament you watched, Lindgren was probably on stage competing in the Finals — and he probably won too.
This announcement marks the end to Lindgren’s incredible career in solo competitions, but it isn’t the end of his time at Melee tournaments or as part of the community. In his video, Lindgren says that while he lacks motivation in singles tournaments and dreaded competing in them for the last year or so, doubles tournaments are an entirely different story.
Across the 60 or so competitive doubles tournaments Lindgren has competed in, he’s placed first in 42 of them with a variety of partners over the years. Most recently, Lindgren has partnered competitively with his younger brother, Andreas “Android” Lindgren. Together the two have won 20 of the last 27 competitions they have competed in. Despite this impressive record, Armada says that he still feels there is more he can do in the doubles scene compared to solo, and it’s a side of competition he still enjoys.
Lindgren ends his video by assuring his fans that this isn’t a goodbye to the Smash Bros. community. He notes that he may not be competing as often, but he will continue to stream frequently, as well as consistently update his YouTube channel and attend Melee tournaments.
