TRAINER'S EYE #21 - "The Heart of Battling" ft. SosaFlo

In this Pokemon interview, we are joined by SosaFlo, a Pokemon GO Trainer and content creator, who shares his experience and passion for PVP battles.

SosaFlo shared with us his journey in the world of Pokemon GO and how he discovered his passion for PVP. He also talked about his interest in PVP both now and moving forward, and his thoughts on the current state of PVP in the game.

SosaFlo also shared with us how he got involved in content creation and the challenges he faced along the way. He talked about his motivation behind starting both the Team Rocket Academy and Pokeball Network and how he hopes to use his platform to expand PVP's reach and provide entertainment for the Pokemon GO community.

Trainer's Eye is a series where the stories are real and people still play this game. From PVP to Shiny Hunting, each person's Pokemon GO journey is unique and we dive into each journey here on As The Pokeball Turns!

Sources
Opening Song: "Forget You" by Alex_MakeMusic from Pixabay
Pokemon Red/Blue Opening Theme Music Remake by Enrico Deiana

Connect with SosaFlo: Twitter | Twitch | Youtube | Discord

Transcript

David Hernandez: 0:00

My name is David Hernandez and you're listening to As The Pokeball Turns! Welcome to another episode of As the Pokeball Turns, where we interview people around the community on how their PokemonGo journey started, where it has been and where it is currently going. For those familiar with the previous sound bite, I'm certain that the first thought that popped into your head was the infamous scene of Nidorino versus Gengar battling each other on the Game Boy. In the early days of Pokemon's history, Game Freak reinforced the idea of Pokemon battling being the central gameplay for its game. From the opening scene, your first rival encounter to even eight Gyms and the Elite Four, you progress through the game by battling alongside the Pokemon you capture on your journey. You even have the infamous line,"when two trainers eyes meet, the battle begins," constantly recycled through every Pokemon game. When you look at Pokemon battles at the macro level of the Pokemon world, battles are a way people engage with new people and Pokemon. They are what we would consider a handshake or a cup of coffee. Furthermore, Pokemon battles are not only a form of communication between trainers and Pokemon, but are also an expression and way to connect with the world them. If you're familiar with the Pokemon games, there are trainers that we connected with, like Whitney from Goldenrod, Cynthia as the Sinnoh champion, or more recently, Larry from Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. If you participate in PVP, I would imagine there are people who come to mind that you met through battling. My guest today is a passionate battler and the owner of the Poke Battle Network. Here is his origin story into the world of Pokemon Go. This is SosaFlo! Today I'm joined by the owner of the Pokebattle Network. SosaFlo. SosaFlo, welcome to the show.

SosaFlo: 2:42

Thank you for having me.

David Hernandez: 2:44

What we were talking about before on the air, I was actually hoping to have you be the first person to interview but our mutual friends, the Round Table Chat(ot) beat me to it. But I don't mind, shout out to The Round Table Chat(ot) by the way, go listen to their podcast, they're awesome people.

SosaFlo: 2:58

I actually found them through Lured Up or B.T.W Actually, when I had B.T.W community on, that's how I found those guys. And Shadow Prime was like,"yeah, I'll, shoutcast the battle nights." He was wonderful and he was like, do you wanna join our podcast? I was like, sure. The first people that asked me to join their podcast, I was like, okay. Those guys really, the two of them together, that podcast is really something special and it's just wonderful to hear them banter and stuff like that.

David Hernandez: 3:22

For sure, for sure. But we're actually here to talk about you and how your story and Pokemon Go started, so when did you first start playing Pokemon GO?

SosaFlo: 3:30

I started playing day one. I was hawked on that thing, like laser eyes, I was so focused. I was refreshing. So it didn't come out to the states until like five o'clock, but we were all getting like the Australia update. Everybody's sending pictures of like, oh, look at how cool this Pokemon is, and oh my God, like, this is so cute, look," blah, blah, blah. And I'm sitting there like, F U F U, what is it? Coming out? Like, forget about this. I was at a baseball game, like blazing in the sun and it goes into OT, like I'm just getting cooked in the heat and I'm just like, this, give me my Pokemon. Finally got to get Pokemon and when it finally popped open, I saw the Pikachu and I went hunting and I just walked around the table and I saw the Charmander and so I picked up my Charmander. June 16th, 2016, Toka and I have been together since then and it's just been a wild ride. I've done so much with Pokemon. It's so funny, like, I don't know if you've heard about any of the stuff that was happening in Los Angeles at that time, like Santa Monica, Pierre was completely flooded with people. And I'm talking like from the edge of the pier down to the beginning, like it was no walking distance because that area was so loaded for Pokestops, Gyms, Water type Pokemon and so as the game like it's meant to be when you have a community around there, more Pokemon pop up. So going out there and collecting Pokemon on day like two and three was just incredible. You just had hundreds of Pokemon hundreds of people, it was so awesome.

David Hernandez: 5:03

Were y'all able to move around in Santa Monica? Cause I know the pier, so I've seen videos from, you know, the major YouTubers. It looks like it'd be difficult to kind of move around if it got very crowded.

SosaFlo: 5:11

It was like as crowded as like a concert would be. You could move around still, it's not that bad. it's still breathable. It's a very big place like the walkway that they give us was very crowded, but on the other side there's like parking lots that you can just walk around, which most people did. At some point you're like,"is this pier gonna break? Is this the day? Is this the day? Will Lapras Raid day break the pier? Will Moltres Raid day son of a no. Oh my god!

David Hernandez: 5:41

Well, let me ask you this, so what was it about Pokemon Go that got you hyped up? Was it just about the game? Was it just the fact that you could travel or the fact that you could move around or?

SosaFlo: 5:49

So I played Pokemon when I was like a kid. When I was in eighth grade, Pokemon first came out and I had it for my Game Boy and I died. I was like, this is the best thing ever, it was so much fun. And then I was sneaking episodes of Indigo League before school at like 6:00 AM. I'm going to class with like tears in my eyes over Butterfree. I stopped when I was like 14 cuz I lost my Game Boy and then they started all doing that transition into like Game Boy DS and PS one, PS two, PS three. Like, it was like, all sorts of things were just changing so quickly. I was like, I'm over it. But then as you get older you're like,"man, they have all these great apps on our phones like, why the hell isn't there a Pokemon game?" why can't I be walking around and catch a Pokemon right now? Like, wouldn't that be so cool? So when Pokemon Go came out I was like, get out. I wanted to be a part of this saga for so long, I was like dying to do it. I couldn't pick up another game console because at this point you've got Megas, they're like doing Dynamaxes at this time, I'm like, it's way too much for me. This is, I, I don't wanna, I, when I left Pokemon, it was cool that you could breed them. Now you like having like real connections, but that's so intricate, like just too much there, to jump back into it. So Go, getting back to the simple life of just walking around and catching it, just made me just so more enthusiastic to be a part of the community again and I just always wanted to go catch Pokemon. Who doesn't wanna have a Charizard buddy? Or like a Mew buddy? Right?

David Hernandez: 7:20

Right? That's the dream right there. Like, you think about the anime where Ash had Pikachu traveling around, and maybe we don't want Pikachu, but we usually just wanna Pokemon to be on our side while we go and encounter whatever events

SosaFlo: 7:29

Our homie, our little homie. Well, we want all our little pets to be like, that's why we have pets, because they are homies, right? Pikachu is such Ash's homie. And like, no matter what, like as a, as a general like Indigo League battler, and like from the get-go, I always see like Pikachu in all of these new shows and I'm like, yo, he's max level a hundred and like 50. Of course he's whipping everybody, like all of these gym leaders. Like, oh, I'm gym leader with like ranked level 40. And you're like, yo, this Pikachu's been with this guy for 20 years, like level a hundred. You're not beating Pikachu ever. Um,

David Hernandez: 8:09

you shouldn't, that's for sure.

SosaFlo: 8:10

You, you shouldn't, you shouldn't be able to in the basis of Gen one, Red and Blue version of video game, once you get a Pokemon a level a hundred, like a level 50 Pokemon, I mean, unless it's the hardest counter ever, right? It's like throwing like the hardest mud slaps on the hardest earthquakes. Pikachu could still whoop you,

David Hernandez: 8:29

So let me ask you this, what's your favorite Pokemon

SosaFlo: 8:31

Charizard?

David Hernandez: 8:31

You sure?

SosaFlo: 8:32

Hands down. Come on man. He fly. He's a fire dragon Pokemon. They haven't made a regular dragon looking Pokemon like that since. It's been so interesting like they gave us three terrible, no offense, terrible fighting fire starters.

David Hernandez: 8:50

Oh, Blaziken

SosaFlo: 8:51

for no reason.

David Hernandez: 8:52

Blaziken, Okay.

SosaFlo: 8:52

I mean, Blaziken was cool at the time, but then they did another one and another one, and you're like, come on like Blaziken so cool like attack wise, but Charizard was like the man, like as a fire starter, like Charizard is the Pokemon, so, it would be Charizard, hands down. The next one would probably be like Mew or Gengar or Grimer and Muk, like I loved old school, Gen one Pokemon, like Primeape. I was so mad, so I bought the Blue version, so I didn't get the Charizard cartridge sad, but it was the only one that Borders had and I was like, I'm buying this game today like I even got a guidebook too to help me out. I got it and then I realized like Primeape isn't on the map like they're showing it in the strategy guide, like you can get it, but it, wasn't in blue, it was in red and my world shattered cause that was like number two G I was like, hold up, you're giving me a fighting monkey in a uh, a fire, a dragon type beginner cuz Charizard, I look like a dragon. I definitely wanna play this game. This looks awesome.

David Hernandez: 9:53

Well that's what I was saying, that's what you get for betraying your fire brethren not getting Pokemon red

SosaFlo: 9:57

Ah, I know. I didn't know any better. I didn't know any better and this is how bad I didn't know any better. I didn't know any better cuz I gave it to a friend of mine to play and I said, please don't go over my game. I had beaten late four. I had a traded, one of the kids traded me their Mewtwo because he was restarting his whole series. And he traded me his starter too, so I had like a Venusaur and uh, Blastoise starters, and this fool wiped my entire game and it's taking me years and this is where Pokemon Go has like, been really healing this wound for me.

David Hernandez: 10:27

Well, I'm glad you have so much experience with Pokemon. I'm glad you came back with Pokemon Go. That's been the beauty of Pokemon Go for me is that it's brought people who left like you did from gen two, maybe, you know, like you said, became too much at some point and it brought people who never had an experience to Pokemon.

SosaFlo: 10:41

Yeah, it's uh,

David Hernandez: 10:43

Well actually, lemme ask you that question. What was it like for you, since you came from Pokemon go to experience some of the new Pokemon that's been over the years that you missed out?

SosaFlo: 10:51

Yo, okay, so you know, you got really hyped in 2016 and you're like, oh, this is great. As a canto player, You know, most of us average players are finally evolving the Pokemon, our Pokedexes are filling up, they're starting to introduce Johto. But you know, it's kind of like lackluster, like I feel like a lot of people really lost la you know, Kanto was so hype and then Johto came and I feel like Johto just gets the brunt of it because I don't think a lot of people care that much about it.

David Hernandez: 11:15

So I think the reason why that's the case, cause I actually agree, I think people like Johto, but it's because of the Gold, Silver Games to where you could go back to Kanto. It's not because of the Johto region itself. It just seems like Johto is kind of the shadow of Kanto for that generation.

SosaFlo: 11:30

There's nothing wrong with Johto, it just felt real lackluster after Kanto and that's just what it was, everybody knows the sequels suck. You know, it's really hard to continue with the sequels and all that stuff. Thank God there's extra lore that they can boost up these Pokemon and all that wonderfulness. So I took a break after like 2016, I didn't really start caring about Raid days, I missed a couple of community days, kind of got bored with Pokemon. And then, so I was at my cousin's wedding and I went for a walk around the park cuz it was this beautiful park out in Boise. I saw these people gathering underneath an awning and I immediately thought, I bet you they're doing a raid, I bet you they're doing a raid. Let me just let, ah, yeah, shit. Let me let you know what, you know what, let me just pull this up. Let me just see. Let me just see. And I opened it up and of course they're doing an A raid and it was an Alolan Exeggutor. And I was like, what the hell is this amazing thing? Executor. What? And like, I clicked on it. I joined the raid, downhill from there. Learned about what Alolan style Pokemons were like. Sold. Absolutely. Sold. I was like Alolan Marowak is my king. Like, are you kidding me? That's my number two like Alolan Marowak and Charizard number one and two, like I'm a ghost fire type Pokemon fighter. But love the new Pokemon, and seeing these new Pokemon from Alola when they started introducing, the Galar Pokemon like G-Fisk, like, come on, G-Fisk is king of all freaking GBL battles right now, like banned from everything. But because I have to get exposed to these top tier Pokemon, I have to take in and learn where they come from and learn their generations and learn all this neat stuff. So it's still like a great learning experience for me, so I'm very happy that Pokemon, keeps bringing all these new ones in and doing it at a nice, pace.

David Hernandez: 13:19

So it sounds like the new forms they were kind of the starter to get you back in the Pokemon Go. How did that transition to you starting to do PVP?

SosaFlo: 13:28

For Pokemon Go? None of it, could have cared less about any of those. Pokemon, I mean, they're really cool to collect, but it wasn't until December of 2018, it was a cold, cold day in the warehouse and I clicked on my game and it activated and there was a battle and I went and I battled I don't know who. I battled anybody who had the game, cuz I think at that point I had been, involved for like the last six months and I was like dealing with like all these guys in my warehouse. I was like, Hey, you want a battle? Hey you want a battle? I was like, I gotta battle everybody and so I was like trying to find anything. And then I found Silph and there was like mentions of the Boulder Cup. I built a team of six, and then people were bringing double scarves and double med's, and I was like, huh, I really need to read the rules then I guess because this company isn't paying attention or something, the hell man! And lo and behold, for twilight, they fixed it immediately, but yeah, I jumped into battling and I joined a NoHo tournament. I found the NoHo community for Boulder Cup, so I stayed on it with the Discord. One of my good battling friends and rivals, MoronTrainer, the two of us took over the NoHo region, trying to build it up, trying to get more people because you might know, like sometimes you show up to a tournament, there's only six people and you're at a park and you're like, Hey, you playing Pokemon? You, you wanna join a tournament? You're asking anybody to come join the tournament. So, we were building a community and we had great tournament show outs throughout there and that's when I started doing Go Stadium and stuff like that and so I've always been a battler at heart. That's kind of the reason why I have my love for Pokemon, like that's why I left it too. Another reason why I like stepped away from go for a little bit cuz I was just like, I wanted to battle the whole point of catching these things were to battle. Like that was it. Like, come on. We all watched the show.

David Hernandez: 15:15

Well on that thought, let me, ask a follow up question. How important is the battling aspect for the Pokemon franchise and maybe even just for Pokemon Go?

SosaFlo: 15:22

Very important. It's the drive of Pokemon. Think about it, you literally have to go to gyms to battle, to get badges and then go and battle the top four in the region on Victory Road and then battle the grand master at the end of it and battle the Mewtwo in order to catch it Do you understand like the whole process of it is to battle, even if you are a collector, how do you weaken a Pokemon? You have to battle a Pokemon with it. Now you don't have to go and battle your whole life, but you do have to battle to catch Pokemon. And it's so great now that the game is more intricate and fun like where it's not just like you have to battle in order to achieve things, like no, you had to push a giant olive into a basket. Yeah, there was a battling moment, but you had to do other things or you had to get your Pokemon to go do things. So battling is still the prominent aspect as they still try to make it that aspect for, the new video games to begin with. So 90% of the video game is battling.

David Hernandez: 16:25

Let's go ahead and talk about Season one of Silph cause I know you've been itching to talk about that. So tell me like, how is it for you to start building up the PVP scene for Silph season one in your community?

SosaFlo: 16:36

I love my community. That LA community was something really special and it really helped kick off and solidify itself in season two. But that season one where we're all trying to figure it out, we're all trying to have fun, not everybody has all the Pokemon yet, we don't know which is great, people are bringing in weird things, you know. It was beautiful to see how season one turned out for Silph cuz they did a really good job helping you build as a battler. Boulder Cup, it was like, oh, make sure you read the rules of your tournament and that's how you learned to build yourself up as a battler. Twilight Cup, it was like Azumarill and how to bank energy, how Azumarill can take hits, how to not shield everything. That was like your first exposure to learning about tankiness and stuff like that. So it was really incredible that Silph brought this out and did this to us and then they were doing theme cups, it was monthly. You could just see the community growing and then in LA this great thing happen as more regions started popping up. We had like 16, 17 tournaments like a month. It was really wonderful to do that and be able to say, okay, I can't do NoHo this weekend, I can go to Burbank next weekend. You could plan your tournament weekend and then do your one tournament and dip. Didn't have to do a thousand battles, didn't feel like you were forced to do it. The Silph ranking system was beautiful then for just being able to just do your tournaments and that was it because they were just banking on people just doing one tournament a month or two tournament a month. I got into Go Stadium as well. I was just trying to find as many battles as I could and that kicked me off in a whole new area cuz that's where you got to play with Battlers from around the world. They put you in a lobby with battlers from around the world, you joined, everybody joined this lobby, and then you all became friends through three months chatting it up. People from Australia, New Zealand, Peru, Europe, it was incredible and all of us were just battlers, like battlers who were talking about battling like the move sets and what this does and what this means and like how to go into it and growing with that group through season one was just wonderful to see that there are people across the world that want to do this as well and are so excited about this. I got to see different regions because I was talking to all these battlers from around the world and it was just so much fun because you watch in the TV show, as a kid, you watch like, how the hell is Taurus gonna beat Dragonite? This is so dumb. Like, what are we doing here?

David Hernandez: 19:01

Right?

SosaFlo: 19:02

But you get to see why these battlers are bringing out some spice Pokemon, so everybody's playing around it. I, for some reason, like to just lock myself away from BBML, like, I don't like using Meta Pokemon. I like finding spice, I like finding counters on counters and that's how I battle. It totally like absolutely handicaps myself and I have to put a lot more work and effort into it to really win a matchup. but I like challenging myself. But like season one was magical, my friend, it gave all of us battlers everything. Triple circles, I'm sure you're very much aware of the triple circle season one.

David Hernandez: 19:38

I'm familiar with it, not too much in depth, unfortunately.

SosaFlo: 19:41

Oh my goodness. I had to go hunt for a regional and right before regionals for Silph, this was the first time Niantic was like, ha ha ha, middle finger, we're changing things up on you! And you're like, why would you do this? So originally, when you hit a charge move, you would tap the circle and you'd have to tap vigorously like super fast, super hard, super fast and you would get this thing called the three circles and then that was the fully charged charge move, that's your excellent, right?

David Hernandez: 20:11

For those listening, what he's talking about was, this was before we had the animations for all the moves, like to where you can do the leaves on the side. This is where the charge move was basically tap, tap, tap and tap, right?

SosaFlo: 20:21

Yeah, that's exactly what happened, so right before our Silph Regionals, Niantic is like, oh, no longer tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, they gave us these new animations, right? Immediately off the bat, battlers are going like, how can I find the way to work around this? Cuz tap, tap, tap, you don't know what's coming. So right before regionals, you had to find a new tactic. You kind of had to turn away from your opponent and like hide your move at some point. But I learned the big circle and what it is, is I just draw a circle in the middle and it hits everything. Ugh. There's, oh my God, I'm like unlocking all of these like, flashbacks of using

David Hernandez: 20:58

memories are coming back after unlock.

SosaFlo: 20:59

Oh, oh my God. So anyways, yeah. During season one, we had started content creating during Rainbow Cup. When I found out that there had been a Worlds and I didn't get to watch it or see it and watch Kieng versus Poke Ak I was like, are you effing kidding me? Like dropping the ball, I was so pissed and that's another reason why I kind of pushed more towards making sure there's content out there because I'm a battler. I wanna watch these battles. I think it's so great. We have these kind of battles and competitions. I was like, how is there not a better outlet of information? Like Go Stadium was doing great but they weren't getting video content out there like they were now. At the end of self., we didn't get to watch anything, didn't get to see anything. nothing happened. I was really sad about that. So, when I ended season one of Silph, I also started the Team Rocket with my buddy James. And, it was really fun to do, it was actually really fun to do, loved making the content, love casting the tournament, like I just started casting it myself or started talking about ZyoniK stuff, like after watching it, I'd watched his battles again and just kind of like cast it myself. Loved casting. Just felt like it was so much hype and it kind of like triggered like that, I don't know, I don't know where this Anime character comes from, but it's that anime character, the announcer character from Dragon Ball Z from

David Hernandez: 22:13

Yeah. Dragon Ball. Dragon Balls Z

SosaFlo: 22:14

Yeah. Like he's the announcer, like in tournaments, he would announce things and then like you hear the crowd and it's like just a regular shot, but they swoop up and then it swoops out and everybody's excited and you're like, let's get the tournament going, like, yes. Yeah!

David Hernandez: 22:29

Let's talk about your casting experience real quick. One goal you had, you wanted to be able to cast a world championship and you actually got to live out that dream, right?

SosaFlo: 22:36

Oh my God. I did. You want to get real, real? So Thursday night, Silph asked me to do it, night Wing, reached out to me, one of the great, great guys behind the scenes as well. Him and Miss Mystic were the top producers for Pokemon Go Content stuff. So it's a Thursday night and I am like in the zone. I get this message from Nightwing and it's like, Hey, we want you to cast, be our co-host, with AJ for Worlds and be with PVPoke for analysis. I get to host, I'm hosting a world championship, this is the dream, this was a dream for me. I've got all this energy. I'm really hyped, like holy shit, this is so cool. I just got dream come true. I got what I had been fighting for, there was no G B L, there was nothing else, there was just Silph Worlds and I'm doing it! I'm on the main stage! I couldn't believe it, I was just so overwhelmed with like all this emotion. So got my groove, did my world championship. Fucking nailed it! Like, fucking nailed it! That world championship was just so fun and I was so grateful that Mystic and Night Wing and Silph wanted me on there and be a part of it like I still get hyped talking about it.

David Hernandez: 23:50

Oh yeah. I was excited to learn about it and I like your motivation like when people listen to this, they're gonna tell because that energy just flows through you and you can tell how passionate you really are about P V P, which is wonderful to see.

SosaFlo: 24:01

I'm happy to provide content out there for battlers so that we can watch great battles and people can understand what a faction is, who doesn't understand what factions is. Season one was the great grandfather of it and us seasoned battlers understand the heartache of season one, but season two is like the concrete, the a hundred percent concrete for us. My whole goal season two when James and I sat down after season one, the whole goal. was to create content for battlers so we can get battlers showing out there. I called one of my like little brothers. I was like, yo bro, can you cast with me? Cuz I thought he was hyped about Pokemon too. He was, but not like I am. Team Rocket was supposed to bring, content and the whole point of Pokemon Go's community, so we wanted to build the community within. We wanted to make sure that the people knew were the regions to go to cuz there were other regions popping off, but you didn't know.

David Hernandez: 24:56

You talk about season one and two, that's when we had the in-person for pvp. Yeah. Silph Road. And since then it's been online. Do you still have that dedication from the community compared to how it was the first two seasons?

SosaFlo: 25:10

No. My community right now and I am very grateful for Dre Flames for holding the reign and RC Cola there for the two of them holding down the SoCalSwablu because there wouldn't be a community out there. There really trying to build that meeting community up right now, SoCalSwablu's discord, for any La Battler is right now, if you're really trying to find your community, but it's nothing like it was in season one. The dedication is not there It's completely different. It's not gonna be the same and it won't be the same until we have to see what Silph does. You want to see where the community's gonna grow and how, the new play Pokemon GBL community will accept Silph because I still talk to people who have no idea what the hell Silph is and I am just mind blown, bro, mind blown. I'm like, how do you battle?

David Hernandez: 26:00

I grew up with Silph. People who grew up 2016 to maybe 2019, I think that's probably a fair estimate. We know what Silph is, Silph has been very integral in regards to our Pokemon Go journey. But like you, I've met more people who started playing they have no idea what Silph is. None. And like you, at first I was like, are you living under a rock? Then I looked at it from an objective point of view. People who come in 2020, their way of experience with this game is different from me and even you. And I think that's kind of the challenge for PVP in regards to, Silph Arena. How do you integrate people who have just grown up on GBL alone?

SosaFlo: 26:40

After the first season of Play Pokemon, you really saw a spike in show six, pick three format, which most GBL-ers had no clue existed or what it was. For them to be able to get people in there, what you're hoping for as they're hyping this up now, you'll hook line seeker with show six, pick three, but with exciting Pokemon. Tired of seeing the same old crap? Try your fucking battling skill out in a meta. See how you handle that crap. They don't have to join the ranking system. They can just be excited to join the meta. When they find out the ranking that there's a ranking system, then they'll be hooked line and sinkered and that'll be them. But then that's up to the communities and the professor, programs to help push as well. It can't just rely on Silph. Silph has to get the battlers intrigued, but in order for the battlers to get the people that are coming from GBL and stuff like that, you've got to have the community push it themselves.

David Hernandez: 27:42

What are things people can do to be able to host in-person tournaments?

SosaFlo: 27:47

As a tournament organizer, I would say find your neighboring discord there cuz this, this is how we found communities back in season one and tournaments. Get with your friends in your neighborhood, great place to do it is to host your tournaments at card shops, neighboring card shops. Big shout out to Snapcasters" lounging out in Phoenix and"Showtime Comics and Cards" out here in Tucson, for hosting our tournaments and letting us for free come there and battle. We were so grateful for them to allow us to do it at their shop, to use their wifi. But yeah, as a tournament organizer, like go to the card shops, find some friends, you'll need eight. Reach out to the GBL community cause there might not be a community leader there, but you might find a battler who is intrigued, is in your neighborhood and would love to be a part of the community as well and start that up with you and you can find one battler there and they might have friends.

David Hernandez: 28:41

Now I wanna talk about your content creation. So originally you started with the Team Rocket Academy and I believe you said you started it halfway through season one?

SosaFlo: 28:48

Yeah, halfway. Halfway through season one.

David Hernandez: 28:50

Why did you start it? Like what were you hoping that would become?

SosaFlo: 28:53

Nobody was casting, there was no caster out there. Kieng was just like telling how he battled, Zyonik was just telling how he battled, Purple Kyogre had like a little casting, but it was like telling how he battled but, nobody got anybody hyped. There was like no hype and like some of these plays were amazing. There were still cool Pokemon to see, the Ice Beam landing on Altaria. The first time you saw that, you're like,"Whoa! Wow! Goodbye Altaria!" This thing's been plaguing me forever. It was just, no one was hyping it up and so I was trying to find some good content. We actually made like this small video, that James had edited and it was hilarious. We were like, let's just make it short while we're killing time, We'll make Pokemon Go content out of it, So it was like gonna be like a real life kind of thing where this kid gets his new Pokemon, he's so excited. And then he stumbles onto like some drunk team Rocket guy, and he's like, go my little like grass Pokemon and Team Rocket guys got Marowak, but it like cuts to the Pokemon Go Battle And then after like live version and then back to the Pokemon Go Battle. So we were having an idea there. We worked for a rental house production, so we both know production, we both done films. I directed. He was my dp. It was great. And then the season kind of wrapped and we had done so many tournaments at NoHo that I was like, let's get the top battles cuz I had seen so many great names. So we got these top battlers. I went around the block and asked everybody, cuz we all had to meet live for this tournament. James brought his laptop, so we did a live NoHo championship. There was a trophy. This is how crazy I was for my tournament. I was also making trophies for the league. I was just cutting off the top and like gluing like Pokeballs on top of it.

David Hernandez: 30:35

I was gonna say, if you're doing this from scratch, you must have some deep pockets at that point.

SosaFlo: 30:39

No, no, no, no, no, no. I was buying on Amazon like$12 like NoHo champion and then I cut the top off and like glue one of those toy Pokeballs on top of it and that was the trophy. My Pokemon journey has been so up and down, but wanting to make content has always been my passion, like wanting to bring out casting, giving some fun tournaments and stuff like that just wanted to bring some hype like this son got it through, no shield, are you nuts? Get outta here, give Nurse Joy a hello for me back in your Pokeball," like there was nothing out there for fun and I wanted to be like that one character. But watching Quickshot and Deficio from League Legends, just having the greatest time ever just talking about, League of Legends, which has its real boring moments where they like have to fill in time. Pokemon is a little more exciting than that and I was like this is it.

David Hernandez: 31:30

People don't realize how much a good announcer can add to a moment. One that comes to mind, it's cheesy, but it's the Pokemon Stadium announcer to where it's just some random lines but it adds some depth into the battle like or The one that really comes to mind, I don't know if you've ever watched wrestling, so in wrestling there's this guy named Jr. He's a legendary announcer, one of the best voices ever. He would always have a good voice for the moment. He'd be like,"by God, best God my witness and he's broken in half," and until you have a good announcer, you don't realize how much you miss it. It should be something hyped. It should be something to where it should mean something for these battlers to go against each other.

SosaFlo: 32:17

Yeah, like, watching, Play Pokemon, the first, first, first stream was so tough. You could tell some guys were nervous and all the right to be, like 5,000, I think we had two to 4,000, like day one or something like that like Liverpool was fire and they did a great job. There's no disrespect, but they, gotten so much better now. Yo, when they added Gabby for get about it. Because she is so good, she was able to bounce between Butters and Caleb Peng, handle the nervousness, cuz they were still a little shaken, they're like,"oh no, something's crazy." When you're in those moments, you don't know what the spotlight, you know what's gonna happen while things are happening and tense things are happening. You got someone talking in your ear while you're watching a tournament trying to make sure you understanding what's happening in the battle at the same time, there's a lot going on. Gabby just coming in there, being a seasoned caster as she was, you can tell Caleb immediately picked up whatever and was just on it. The two of them, Butters and Caleb together now are like, bro, bro combo, but they're just killing it now.

David Hernandez: 33:24

Now let's keep moving on, eventually you created the PBN, the Pokebattle Network and I believe that's fairly recent, right?

SosaFlo: 33:30

Yes, I started Pokebattle Network in October.

David Hernandez: 33:33

What's the goal for the PBN?

SosaFlo: 33:36

PBN is to bring to the community the entertaining of battling like the one source, like Go Stadium is doing a great job at it, but they're missing some things here or there. I wanna be able to provide that. I wanna be able to provide basically like an MTV channel where tournaments are happening, battles are happening, you could turn the channel on and it's just either somebody's Silph tournament, play Pokemon rewatch, podcasting radio, something for the battlers to go to and watch and listen. The channel is to bring all of the source to the battlers, like just the MTV basically for, Pokemon battling

David Hernandez: 34:15

So what do you hope to do with PBN moving forward? what's something people can look forward to?

SosaFlo: 34:20

The game plan is continue to bring fun, amazing content. For me, myself, I'm trying to be a caster. I would love to go out to San Diego just to join the broadcast team and interview like all the battlers cuz you know, it'd be so great to interview my friends and like see how they've been over the last years. I want to be able to, do the 24 7 channel, so I will provide as much battling content as I can like I've been doing. So putting on either faction runs or battle nights, my editor and I are gonna try to do two battle nights a month. They're fun. I'm trying to get ahold of Latin factions so we can get Latin out there cuz there's no Latin love, there's no APAC love. I'll be live streaming doing more GBL duo stuff, trying to get more content creators on there, joining me in the studio to just chat about things. The point is to get battlers and content creators out there so that battlers know who to go and, watch and who to see and who's out there that they might not know is out there.

David Hernandez: 35:21

I'm looking forward to it and I hope everybody else who listens is looking forward to seeing what your content's gonna look like moving forward cause I think you've got some big goals and I think you've got a nice place where it's desperately needed for the Pokemon GO PVP scene..

SosaFlo: 35:34

Well, thank you, thank you, yeah, there's this huge hole that's just not getting filled properly. I'm doing what I can, I'm only a man right now. Cuz guess what? We didn't get? Any update on Australia! The one day, 31 battler event that happened! We had to get by who? The man, the myth, the legend, PVPSteve! I'm telling you guys, PVPSteve is keeping us alive on things. We just so grateful for him. He is such a great kid, sparkling personality, so happy I was able to work with him so long ago and meet him and we've been able to be friends since. The kid is just working so hard to keep everything alive. But I wanted to watch the battles, I wanted to see you playing, like, come on! This is our first Oceanic view! I know why they did it, but you're not gonna show us anything? Anything for Oceanic. We're not getting Jack? Like, I wanna get those tournaments out here. I want more of those tournaments! Like, that's my point is that like I find all these things, I'm just gonna put it out there. I'm gonna gather all of the stuff. I'm gonna make a highlight show of it. I'm gonna have some guests, we're gonna talk like we're having some good times, we're gonna give you good entertaining battles as well like a battle would wanna see. I'd like to find a team that could help me out. Team members that can be there on a weekly to help provide more content, doing the battling providing that sort of entertainment. That's just what, Pokebattle Network is trying to do.

David Hernandez: 37:08

Definitely man and with your passion, I'm sure we got a lot of things to look forward to when it comes to the PBN and I look forward to seeing where your journey goes with everything you've told me so far.

SosaFlo: 37:18

Aw, thanks man, I appreciate that!

David Hernandez: 37:20

You're very welcome. Thank you for coming on to the show! Before you do go, if people wanna check out your content or if they wanna connect with you, where can they connect with you? By all means, please plug away.

SosaFlo: 37:32

So you can find me at, twitch.tv/pokebattlenetwork1. PBN1 for all of your battling needs. On YouTube, it's Pokebattle Network. And then on Twitter, it is@SosaFlo1, it's just me. So not making that difficult for anybody tried that with Team Rocket people. Like, what? Oh, that's so difficult. And it was way too much to manage. I thought James was gonna help manage more, which he did a great job with. And I, I just failed at managing that. Like, I just suck at all of this kind of stuff. Let me give you the Discord you can find me at is AZ Pogo PVP. Right now we're trying to build up the AZ community, but we never fret from having battlers wanting to come and join the AZ community too. You know, we we're open to having all battlers from around the world, battling it out and if you are a team that wants to fight an AZ team, reach out to me and let me know like, I am always here to take battlers for next battle nights. But yeah, the Discord's there, join that discord as well.

David Hernandez: 38:30

And I'll make sure to include links in everything he said down in the description of today's episode. Thank you for listening to another episode of As The Pokeball Turns. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. If you wanna support the show, consider becoming a Patreon by going to patreon.com/AsThePokeballTurns or by sharing the podcast with your friends and family. And I'll see you next time! Here's the sneak peek for the next episode of As The Pokeball Turns!