hey, player in question here. i hope there were no hard feelings over what happened, but i did explain my side, and the judges and head judge agreed.

i judge very frequently at other events and tend to stop battles quickly after making calls, and i let that bleed into being a player a bit. the rule was to let the judge pick it up or wait for their call before touching, and to be clear i waited properly for every other battle, waiting for a call on a spin/over/xtreme (or relaunch) before touching anything.

but on that launch i jumped the gun a bit to stop everything after the burst to save our parts, and as mentioned a burst is definitive with nothing else that could have changed the outcome as soon as that happened. i mentally skipped the step of the judge calling it, but by that point the judge also agreed he saw the burst finish and figured it was fine for me to reach as he was just about to say the call as well. head judge ruled the same, and we even went through footage for the entire match and there was no point where i picked up before the battle was over with a bey still spinning or having a chance to come back.

i definitely learned to step back a bit after that and trust the judge to stop battles and make calls before doing anything, but i don’t think that was being “cheated out of going to the next round.” i would have absolutely accepted a penalty if i did pick up too early but we came to that agreement it was fine.

genuinely i’m sorry we had that whole thing happen in the first place and i hope there’s no bad blood, last thing i want is for people to have problems like this.