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"Okay, in his defence, he was talking about the Capcom Cup, and that kid has been cut from the team immediately."

New Zealand's U14 Hockey Coach, Benson Fiorentini, spoke to the media this week following the now-controversial cutting of 14-year-old captain Liam Rutherford at the Evolution Championship Series, better known to fans as EVO, in Las Vegas.

"I mean, pretty plain and simple, we had a goal in mind. That was to take the Tekken pools by absolute storm, obliterate the competition therein, and prove that New Zealand really is a Tekken-playing nation." Fiorentini's eyes were welling with tears as he spoke, clearly hurt by his player's comments. "I mean, Liam really was one of the best of us, and to see him abandon Tekken for something as rote and uninteresting as Street Fighter 6, it--yeah, it hurts. It definitely hurts."

The controversial U14 hockey team was declared disqualified from the international tournament earlier last week after a game in which the Austrian team suffered myriad injuries to over fifteen of their young players. Despite the clear skill on display by New Zealand's young players, they simply could not stay out of the penalty box when it mattered.

"I still like the kid fine, but it's one of those things where it just makes more sense for us to part ways here. He's a hell of a player, but we can't afford for our team to be associated with someone who can so flagrantly shirk his teammates like that."

Fiorentini ended the presser by mentioning the performance by one of his other top stars, 13-year-old Josh Li, who officially went undefeated in his pools matchups at EVO earlier this morning.