Challenge Smackdown

Challenge Smackdown was a legendary QuakeWorld tournament started in 2000.

History
Sometime early 2000, Hoony proposed to  Jjonez to create a 'Quakeworld Club' based on the Challenge network. That was because the interest in QW was declining and he wanted to give the community something to organize around. The 'Club' was not supposed to be just a league, but also a news website keeping track of things such as lans and client developement (since the source code had not long before been released). In fact, one of the grander ideas was to have the club organize lans across the globe.

Hoony and Jjonez then talked to a number of people, including Griff and and other Challenge-Network site responsibles and contributors. A worldwide league was not the initial goal although the concept of a Club quickly diverted into that direction because roughly at the same time, Mushi, a Challenge-Network columnist, was running along with  Gacel an Iberian league LEQW, and thinking of making a European-wide league. At that time, the most known leagues were Villains and NQR ladder, none European-wide. Until that time, the national scenes were 'big enough' so international fights were not so common. But, due to the massive improval of connection's quality, and the decrease of players, a new approach was needed. At first Mushi talked to Jjonez and SK-Griff in order to create a all-European tournament with two divisions: North and South with LAN finals being considered. "The club" and "europe-wide league" merged into one goal.

At about the same time, discussions to set up a league on Challenge Australia were also ongoing, and that initiative was soon combined. The admin of Villains, Egowhip was then contacted and happily joined forces too. Many more people got involved including ZzjohnzZ,  Judge Dredd,  Porto,  Wart,  Apollyon,  Tekai,  Andy and  Znappe to finally set up the worldwide Challenge-Smackdown league.

All these people gathered on irc meetings where they discussed how this revolutionary world league would be. Some rules from Villains were merged with some new rules, resulting in the standard for worldwide 4on4 rules until today and "ruleset smackdown".

Some weeks later, an unknown Australian player came up with 'Smackdown' and the name was decided.

At 28 May 2000, Jjonez wrote:

Challenge Smackdown: the definitive QW tournament!!! No, you are not dreaming! The Challenge gaming Network will host a brand new global QuakeWorld competition: Challenge Smackdown. Why QuakeWorld (QW)? OK, the reason is quite simple: although it has been around for quite a while (in gaming terms), QW is still the best platform for deathmatch teamplay. And just because of this age, the skill exhibited by the QW players and teams of today is nothing short of amazing. The Smackdown league will determine which is the best QW clan in the world, starting of with 4 divisions very soon: 1. Division North Europe (CHSD-EU N)  2. Division South Europe (CHSD-EU S)   3. Division Australia (CHSD-AU) 4. Division North America (CHSD-NA)

Taken from Smackdown HQ

IRC meeting logs still online 1 2. Thanks to Jjonez.

Australia

 * Season 1: Fallen Angels
 * Season 2: Fallen Angels
 * Season 3: Try Hard DM
 * Season 4: Fallen Angels
 * Season 5: Try Hard DM

Brazil

 * Season 2: Not completed

North America

 * Season 1: American Gangsters
 * Season 2: American Gangsters
 * Season 3: American Gangsters
 * Season 5: Fired

Europe

 * Season 1: Flaming Fist
 * Season 2: Euthanasia / Flaming Fist
 * Season 3: Slackers
 * Season 4: Clan MalFunction
 * Season 5: Slackers
 * Season 6: Fragomatic

South Europe

 * Season 1: TRASH
 * Season 2: AntraX
 * Season 3: Not completed

Challenge Smackdown 2 CD
After the second Season a CD was compiled and sold for $15. It did include all the reports, demos, tools to play & watch demos and some extra content like tours of the maps, statistics of the games and more articles. Also on the CD were two demos with Qizmo voice commentary by Hoony which was unheard of before.