Joseph Helmert sat down calm, cool and collected for his first-round matchup in a Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tournament in Starkville. As he plugged in his GameCube controller, the blue eyes behind his round-rimmed glasses remained locked on the monitor. Within mere minutes, Helmert won the match and was moving on to his next opponent. 
Helmert, a junior mathematics major, is better known to the world as YoseFu, a curly-headed, Hawaiian shirt wearing professional Super Smash Bros. player eagerly climbing the ladder to the top. His character of choice is Simon Belmont, and video compilations of him playing the character have gained as many as 38,000 views.
Super Smash Bros. is a platform fighting game created by Nintendo where players can choose to fight as one of 89 different playable characters. At 70,280,000 copies sold worldwide across six platforms, the series is far and away one of Nintendo’s biggest franchises, beloved by millions. 
For those like Helmert who love to compete, Super Smash Bros. has a large and easily accessible competitive esports scene that expands across the globe.
Competitive Super Smash Bros. dates to 2002, with tournaments since growing to become as large as 3,500 entrants competing for prize pools worth over $150,000.
As a middle school student, Helmert began playing the game online against others and decided instantly that he could enjoy both playing competitively and learning intricate details about the game.
While growing up and attending school in Oxford, Mississippi, Helmert could often be found competing in Super Smash Bros. 4 tournaments on campus at the University of Mississippi, familiarizing himself with the collegiate esports scene well before he made his way to Mississippi State University.
“Smash 4 introduced me to a playable online mode, where I was able to see that I’m nowhere near as good as I thought I was,” Helmert said. “It hasn’t stopped being fun. It was one of the first hobbies I got into, basically, and it’s continued to be fun. One of my first hobbies that wasn’t just filling free time. I’d go out of my way to do it.”
Learning to play competitively sent Helmert down a path to success and popularity both in-person and online. Since the 2018 release of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, he has been ranked No. 1 in Mississippi for 18 consecutive months and was recently ranked within the top 200 players in North America by OrionRank.
“It’s nice to be kinda popular,” Helmert said with a laugh. “It’s kind of a stereotype. In high school, I wasn’t popular. I didn’t have any problems with anyone, but I wasn’t a super popular person. But this, I’m doing something that I think is cool and other people think is cool. It’s nice to have that kind of support.”
Helmert’s successes have gained him more than just notoriety, with his largest tournament win receiving him a payout as high as $5,800. On average, Helmert earns around $100 per tournament win in Starkville.
“I haven’t really had to worry about paying for small things while in college,” Helmert said. “It’s been a really nice cushion, to not have to worry about stuff like that.”
Since coming to MSU, Helmert has found a home to grow his competitive endeavors with Smash Dawgs at MSU, the university’s competitive Super Smash Bros. club. The gaming student organization meets to play Super Smash Bros. every Wednesday at 7 p.m. in McCain Hall and is made up of students with majors ranging from aerospace engineering to finance.
“Playing [in Starkville] has absolutely been a positive thing. It’s a really dumb reason to come to a college, but Smash really was one of the deciding factors because I knew Starkville had such an active scene,” Helmert said. “Even before coming to MSU, I was coming to events in Starkville. Almost all of the best events in Mississippi have either been in Starkville or been run by people from Starkville.”
Outside of Starkville, Helmert’s desire to compete has taken him from coast to coast. After entering last minute and winning The Arcadian Qualifier 3, an online tournament with 989 entrants, Helmert won a paid trip to Ontario, California, for the “supermajor” tournament Mainstage 2022.
Of the 512 entrants at Mainstage 2022, Helmert ended his tournament run barely outside of the top 16 at 25^th place. His most impressive and exciting match at the event came against SBI e-Sports’ very own KEN, a Sonic the Hedgehog player from Tokyo, Japan, currently ranked No. 6 overall in Japan and No. 17 in the world by OrionRank.
“I went in [against KEN] not really knowing what to expect. I kind of expect to get run over,” Helmert said. “I just played my game as I normally do, and it worked out.”
Helmert was able to take the first two games of his best-of-5 match against KEN convincingly. The third and fourth games of the set went to KEN, in a fashion that Helmert described as a “definite win in KEN’s favor.”
The fifth and final game came down to the wire, with both players down to their final lives before elimination. Helmert said that in moments like this where the pressure is on, he shines best.
“I could have died at any moment. I definitely have a good comeback factor. I try not to think about it in the moment. I don’t think of it as ‘I have to make a comeback right now,’ I think about it as ‘I have to keep winning,’” Helmert said. “Things go right sometimes. I managed to make that comeback and beat KEN.”
Through all of the competition and success, the goal for Helmert is to one day be signed to a professional esports organization where he can continue to compete on the highest levels possible.
“I would really like to get signed on to some team so that I can continue to compete. After graduating college, I’d like to be able to compete as a job for a bit,” Helmert said. “That is absolutely the goal for the near future.”