The Yu-Gi-Oh! Card game have been going strong for 25 years and continue to release new products for fans to enjoy. One of which is Yu-Gi-Oh! MASTER DUEL, a free to play title that is available on PC, mobile and consoles and has seen over 10 million downloads. To promote the title Konami has offered various events including the Shadow Duelist series of Tournaments where the winner will take on a masked celebrity competitor. The second Shadow Duelist tournament has concluded and Axle, this season’s Shadow Duelist has been revealed to be…WWE Superstar Xavier Woods.
Xavier Woods began his wrestling career in 2005 and reached the WWE in 2010 where he has been since. Woods has never been shy about sharing his interests with the WWE Universe having worn gear which paid homage to popular culture properties such as Power Rangers and Dragon Ball Z as well as running his own streaming channel Up Up Down Down, where we see him and his co-workers enjoy a variety of video games and even card games. So it would make sense that TCGs would be within the realm of his interests.
The finals of the 2nd Shadow Duelist Tournament took place this past weekend and was aired on Official Yu-Gi-Oh! Digital Games Twitch and YouTube. UWS_Kaito outlasted over 400 competitors for a chance to unmask and compete against Woods and he was able to vanquish the 12 time WWE Champion and former King of the Ring to take up a signed copy of the Woods’ Axle mask as well as a giant copy of Kashtira Fenrir which was a pillar of Woods’ deck during the duel.
The Shadow Duelist initiative is certainly a great way to get mainstream eyes onto the game. Along with Woods, the first Shadow Duelist was singer/songwriter Zan Malik who has a tremendous fan base, so I’m interested to see what celebrities are closted Yu-Gi-Oh! Fans. For those looking to get into the game digitally Konami even has a title that can ease beginners into the game in the form of Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links.
Yu-Gi-Oh! MASTER DUEL is available now on PC, Switch, Android, iOS, the Xbox and PlayStation platforms.