This 'Mortal Kombat' champ cared more about beating his rival than winning $

LOS ANGELES -- Brad "Scar" Vaughn didn't care nearly as much about winning the SoCal Regionals Mortal Kombat XL as he did about finally beating his rival.

Vaughn won $10,000 for his first 1st-place finish -- but was visibly exctied earlier in the match, when he finally got past Dominique "SonicFox" McLean.

Vaughn signed with Panda Global Gaming this June and quickly established himself as their golden Mortal Kombat player. But no matter where he played, McLean had his number. Not Sunday.

This MKXL tournament was the first since the game's big patch in early October, an update that balanced many characters -- including weakening Vaughn's main fighter Sonya Blade. Vaughn spoke with Mashable at SoCal Regionals about how he's faired since Sonya Blade was nerfed -- in fact, he thinks it helped him.

Mashable: How does it feel to win MKXL at SoCal Regionals? It feels lovely. This is what I strive to achieve every time I come out to these tournaments. Defeating SonicFox that was my main thing -- even moreso than winning the tournament, because I always come up short against SonicFox. I always get second, every time I face him. I always come up short in general so beating him this tournament was very, very exciting for me. It was a big weight off my chest trying to overcome him so I'm definitely proud of it.

So beating SonicFox was a personal thing for you? It was definitely a personal thing for me.

(Skip to 1:58 in the video below to see Scar beat SonicFox)

How do you think the patch affected your playing? I think it boosted it. You have some guys that were carried by stuff that was in pre-patch but now that they got rid of the dumb stuff that made the game dumb ... now it pushes more toward defensiveness and the zoning is very good now, too. It's starting to separate the really good players from those who just got by from broken stuff in the game.

A lot of people say "Oh you wouldn't be nothing without Sonya, she's broke, or the character is broke and it's not the player it's the character." Now they see because my character has been nerfed. I'm using [the character] Smoke too, which I don't think he has anything close to the broken stuff Sonya has. So this really shuts up a lot of haters and yeah, I'm feeling good about it.

What does your training regiment look like right now? Studying tape, studying new changes in the patch. That's pretty much it. ... The guys I'm around day in and day out in these tournaments, I try to get a much practice with them as possible because that's how you level up the fastest, and playing those guys you come across new tech or changes quickly.

Any advice on how to get better at Mortal Kombat? As far as MKX I would say you have a lot of online tournaments, try and build a nice network of top players or semi-top players and just play. Of course you're going to lose, just take your losses, don't let it discourage you and just get better. Watch a lot of footage and just take what you learn from that footage and apply it to your game and I think you should be all right.