A TENNESSEE KNOCKOUT
In the wake of the final KIT in 2022, a gap was left in the hearts of the the entire Tennessee Fighting Game Community (FGC). Kumite in Tennessee was our states go-to annual Fighting Game Tournament for nearly a decade, and without it, many passionate players in the state were left without an event to call home.
Having organized smaller, more local FGC Events over the past decade myself, I decided to take on the reigns of bringing our great state together again, and give them the yearly event they deserve.
This is KNOX-OUT
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FINAL OPPORTUNITIES
While KIT is a long-running, storied event, I want to mostly touch on the final KIT that took place in OCtober of 2022. While I had ran events for a few years in North Carolina, I had moved to Tennessee in 2020 amidst the Pandemic to go back to school. At this point, I had begun taking on a larger role in my local FGC organization, Scruffy City FGC. It was put front and center that this would be the final KIT, as the lead organizer was officially retiring. I wanted our city, Knoxville, to not only have a larger presence in the minds of the greater Tennessee FGC, but I also wanted to grow interest my favorite title: Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike.
Photo of KIT 2022 Trophies and a selection of attendees
I was already hosting my arcade machines at a local small business, a practice I could write an entire story on alone, but I decided to take the leap and organize getting my machines to Lebanon TN for the weekend and make this something to remember.
In brief: I was able to work directly with the KIT lead and team to both run the tournament and supply 3rd Strike equipment for the event, which combined with all of their other titles ran by other organizers, culminated in the largest KIT to date.
Cabinets and consolized gear being used at KIT 2022.
But with that, it was over.
Tennessee had lost its Fighting Game Mecca
MOVING UP AND SIDEWAYS
At this time, the community in Knoxville was going through some changes.
As I was preparing for KIT, the small business I had partnered with to host our events, as well as my arcade cabinets for the community to enjoy, wanted me to renovate their back storage area to use as an arcade and gaming space. This would give the Knoxville community a more perminent 3rd place, so I became knee-deep in the commercial renovation. The space was in regular, pay-to-play use for a few months prior to KIT. I held weekly events here for our community that we're always free or low-cost.
Removing old shelving from brick walls, bringing in TVs and gear for permenant use.
TVs set up and pay-to-play space in use!
Secondly, two of our core team of organizers had moved to neighboring regions TN. Our head organizer at the time was going into his 6th year of organizing these events, so I took on a larger role as a result. We shifted priorities and I became ScruffyCities new Lead orgnizer, while the former took on the brunt of our production.
Our core team with my machines at KIT 2022 - myself on the right with our previous lead to my left.
After a few months of stewing, making stronger bonds between our scene and those in Nashville and Chattanooga, creating new art assets and marketting materials for us, as well as finding some new hands to help fill out the number of organizers on our team at home, the weight (or lack thereof) of not having a KIT in the distance began to hang heavy. We had the interest. We had the barebones team. All that we had to do was be the ones to make the push.
THE CHALLENGE
REHOMING
Before I approached the rest of the team with the idea of making a new, large-scale event, I needed a pitch.
With our connections to the communities in Nashville and Chattanooga, we had more then enough equipment to host a selection of tournaments for roughly a few hundred attendees. The average length of time per tournament varies greatly between games, but with the number of complete setups we had between all of us (monitors, systems with games, etc) the math worked out that we could reasonably complete a significantly sized tournament in the 2-day event format.
At this point, I habegan scouring our city for potential venues to host us with my wonderful partner, Taylor. Sometimes my ideas can be a little broad and grandeous, so she has always been my rock that keeps me grounded. I narrowed down a shortlist of potential venues - some privately owned, some form non-profits, and some that were owned by the City of Knoxville. I knew we needed at least these things to run an event that not only I would be happy to present to our state, but that our state deserved:
- It must stay within our limited budget. This is not a full-time job for any of us, and more importantly, the Fighting Game Community already sufers from it's largest events growing increasingly cost-prohibitive year after year. I wanted us to be as afforable and as accessible as possible.
- The venue must be able to scale. for a first-year event, I knew we could grow, but we had to rely on good advertisement from word-of-mouth after the fact.
- It must be able to accomodate food. If there's one thing that every competitor loves to talk about at major events, it's where they ate while they traveled, and more importantly, how close the food was to the venue.
- It must have the minimum necessities for our event. Beyond restrooms and air conditioning, we needed ethernet access with strong speeds to handle multiple high-bitrate livestreams.
Finally, probably most importantly: We needed a gimmick. A draw. Something completely unique to us and Knoxville that would entice players to come for that alone, since anyone could go to any random tournament on any given weekend if they really wanted to travel.
Photo of a Token Throwndown - A charity tournament my team holds once a month in support for Extra Life Childrens Charities.
Every venue, owner, or city representative I met with just couldn't quite tick every box I had to check. Either costs were too absorbant, resources would not meet our minimums, or space wasn't adequate. After countless calls and meetings, as if by fate, it was the very last Venue we met with that finally met every one of our needs...
THE GOLDEN GLOVES
ROUND 1
THE PITCH
After scheduling a meeting with the caretakers of the Golden Gloves Arena, I took a brief tour during a training session. The caretakers are registered as a non-profit, and while the city has ownership of the building, they coordinate all of the events and use of the Arena. Today, they primarily host coaching and training sessions for youth boxing completely free of charge. Many years ago, it was once the home of Knoxville's own World Heavyweight Champion Big John Tate.
Shot from the entrance of the gym facing the main ring.
Shot from the rear of the gym facing the main ring.
It was Spacious, it had Character, it was ran by down-to-earth people from our own community, and it was Scruffy.
It was perfect.
The very next day, I gathered up my core team for lunch to talk about organizing our "next event," (implying our monthly charity series), and came prepared with the story thus far.
I spoke on our experience within the region. The newfound lack of a Major Regional event. Our image as spearheading organizers amongst the community leaders in Nashville and Chattanooga, our resources at hand - both in terms of staff and equipment, and finally, Golden Gloves. While I could sense the oncoming aprehension as I pushed through each bullet, the rush of recognizing the body language and responses leading to "making the sale" was flowing through me.
They were sold.
ROUND 2
GOALS, RESULTS, REFLECT, REPEAT
At the time of writing, my team and I are in the midst of planning our 3rd iteration of KNOX-OUT, so I want to condense some of the lessons, challenges, and experience we've gained leading up to the conclusion of the most recent event.
A pair of 'Golden' Boxing gloves - a prize awarded to 1st place players.
First, my intention always was, and probably always will be to serve our home community and those surrounding. Never has there been plans to try and convince players and competitors from the far west coast to fly in for the weekend; we would love to have them if they feel the desire to come, but they're not the target. If we were fortunate enough to have positive word of mouth spread to players in the midwest and west coast, that's fantastic, but our target demographic has always been close to home. This is exactly why our partnerships became so important.
The first KNOX-OUT in 2023 was the largest tournament that Knoxville has ever had the honor of hosting, seeing nearly 200 competitors across 10 different titles...but that wouldn't have been possible without unifying all of our neighboring coordinators to make it happen. Over the course of the remaining months of 2023, I collaborated with events being hosted across Tennessee and their organizers in order to not only strengthen our bonds as leaders in this space, but bring everyone together to work this event. This often meant an exchange of Equipment, Labor, and self-funding our lodging to make it happen, but I believe in the power of good will probably more then I should.
Either myself or a small number of our core group would travel to these events and table to promote KNOX-OUT while the others filled hands as staff. In our first year of promotion, one of our most successful in-person marketting campaignes was our "Beat the Bull" competitions, where we would play off of our "PUNCH-OUT!!" inspiration and hold contests for defeating a series of opponents in the NES title live for discounts on registration; named after the titular fight against "Bald Bull."
Winner of our Beat the Bull Challenge.
For the next years event in 2024, we switched up our activities and instead hosted a setup for Wii Boxing with some of our promo materials. Fighting Game players being competitive to their core, this successfully drew in excentric players to "fight" their friends, and often drew crowds at the outrageouness of it all. For our 2024 event, Wii Boxing was also a featured tournament title, so having the title out on the floor not only inspired excentric players to come to us, but it also encouraged them to sign up for the game they had such a great time playing in front of equally as excited onlookers.
A table advertising KNOX-OUT 2024 at the event Climax of Night.
Table set up for KNOX-OUT at a tournament hosted in Smyrna, TN.
ROUND 3
LOOK AND FEEL
For each iteraton of KNOX-OUT, I've always emphasized the importance of keeping a certain image of our event through new artwork and specific photography requests. It's important that we steer our brand image to market our event acurately - large Fighting Game Events like EVO, Combo Breaker, or CEO, all take place in very modern (and expensive) Event Centers and Hotel Ballrooms. KNOX-OUT is not the same kind of event. We want our image to immedietely convey that we are Grassroots, Community Driven, and expectations for our venue should be as such, but still be exciting! By pushing this honestly and through community good-will, thus far, our feedback has trended over 90% positive through our post-event surveys.
The main ring after the final day of KNOX-OUT 2024.
Each year we routinely work with the artist Dropman, a talented digital and pixel artist from Brazil, to design our Key art and Logo for each event. We love to play into our Boxing theme; the pitch of comeptitors being able to play their games on a live stream while inside of a real, genuine boxing ring is our events unique draw compared to anywhere else you could compete! We go through a lengthy ideation and iteration process for each years key art - some progression of that is shown below.
KO '24 KEY ART
KO '24 LOGO
ROUND 3
LOOK AND FEEL CONT.
To the same point, we also stress working with not only Local Photographers, but my employ those that have a passion for our community at their core. Being able to capture the feeling of a grassroots event is so important for us - every shot that we can take each year feels like a stepping stone towards the next. Being able to visually show how much passion and communal love is in the air at an event like ours takes talent, and an eye for what our specific demographic wants out of an event. Working with Beanie Buttons each year is bar-none our most valuable and worthwhile expense.
KO '23-'24 PHOTOS
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KO 24' TRAILER
ROUND 4
KEEP CONNECTED
Throughout our planning periods, I am always making efforts to keep our community connected with those around us. After our first year in 2023, we gave back by bringing all of the equipment for and running the secondary livestream production for a similar first-year event in Atlanta, MAX MODE. MAX MODE is now planning for their 3rd year in 2026.
Myself behind the Production Booth at MAX MODE.
Even now as we continue planning for our 3rd year of KNOX-OUT, we've been actively keeping up with and assisting in the coordination of Midsouth Fight Club, a team-league for Street Fighter 6 featuring prominant players from TN and surrounding states. While I've built and maintained the website, other members of our team have handled livestreaming services and neighboring members of our community have coordinated and scheduled the bi-weekly matches. MSFC has been another great avenue to keep all of our respective scenes connected.
Our team in Knoxville is also slated to run production for the upcoming Southern Battle Opera, taking place in Chattanooga in July 2025. Many notable players will be attending from out of state, so while we're also excited for our own team of players to participate, we're equally as excited to build out our network and brand awareness even further as we lead up to KNOX-OUT '25.
Poster for Southern Battle Opera 2025 - Created by Chattanooga organizer
ROUND 5
PROGRESS
As KNOX-OUT has continued to exponentially grow year over year, we're just as excited to continue adding and growing along with the event. I'm hoping to continue logging our progress as an event, using this space to continue adding what I believe to be important stepping stones that have made KNOX-OUT the go-to Fighting Game event for our state.
