By Ginx eSports TV
It’s pretty incredible to see the Street Fighter 5 Top 8 from EVO 2016 being played out in the Mandalay Bay events centre, home of things like boxing and MMA rather than this virtual fighting – so to speak.
However, it looked at home, with the production being on point – the most incredible stage and a packed arena of fighting game fans – and the ESPN televised version looking as legit as you’d expect from the the premier sports channel in the US.
Street Fighter 5 at EVO 2016
The first match of the Top 8 between Fuudo and MOV was exactly what this event needed. A high-level, back and forth affair which showed off elite R. Mike and Chun-Li play, going right down to the wire two games to two before Fuudo edged the win.
This set the tone for what was to be an incredible night of Street Fighter action. One of the best ever, in fact. It couldn’t have come at a better time.
The hero of the night was LI Joe (and his incredible Dad, watching from the crowd and with an ESPN camera on him at all times, it seemed!), America’s only player who made it into the Top 8 and who had two insanely tense matches, besting Japan’s Eita and coming up just short to Yukadon, but potentially winning over masses of new fans that were tuning in for the first time to watch the tournament.
The match with Eita, a back and forth brawl, shared similarities with the legendary UFC fight between Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar, which took place on what was their US TV debut and was so exciting people were tuning in just to see what all the fuss was about. We’ll see the EVO TV numbers soon, I’m sure. For what it’s worth, the UFC sold last week for four billion dollars.
One of the more interesting things coming out of the tournament was the emerging character tier list in the game. Sure, Street Fighter 5 has only been out for six months, and tournaments to date have had a decent mix of characters in their Top 8s, but this had several Nash’s and Chun-Li’s.
There are both characters that have decent damage, plenty of options no matter what the situation and good normals, making them extremely effective. This was perhaps one of the only own goals of the EVO broadcast, where new viewers were treated to several mirror matches.
Totally out of anyone’s control, of course, but one can assume Capcom were hoping that a wider spread of their characters would be on show. Moving forward, it’s going to be interesting to see what characters other players pick up. Do they persevere with who they’ve already put time into, or go with these clearly quite dominant characters?
Big drama came in the winner’s finals, when Infiltration – clear favourite to take the whole thing – was sent into Losers by Fuudo, his Team Razer stablemate. Fuudo uses R. Mika’s many 50/50 mix ups to caused problems for the player who many believe to be the best player in the world right now and eked out a victory in a set that went right to the wire.
In the Loser’s finals, he faced Yukadon, who he sent to Loser’s bracket earlier in the night. In what was yet another match that went right to the final round and yet another Nash mirror match, Infiltration fought his way back to a rematch with Fuudo.
Not to be deterred from his previous loss, Infiltration perfected Fuudo three times during the grand finals on his way to resetting the bracket, setting up a grand slam finish for the biggest EVO of all time.
With momentum on his side the favourite showed why he had earned that title – and why he is regarded as the current King of Street Fighter 5 – by winning five back to back sets to put himself on the verge of victory.
A spirited fight back by Fuudo caused some late excitement, but Infiltration pulled off the win. After finally being bested at CEO 2016 last month by rival Tokido, Infiltration won his second EVO championship. An impressive feat, even for one considered the best ever.
EVO’s TV debut, and Street Fighter 5’s first showing at the tournament, appears to have been a clear success. It showed the world what elite level fighting games looked like and contained the right amount of drama to draw newcomers to the whole fighting games thing.
This is the start of a new dawn for the FGC – EVO is only going to get bigger and bigger as eSports grow over the next few years – and if Street Fighter 5 grows in the same way that the previous game did, in terms of viewership as well as the skill level of the competitors, then EVO is going to continue to be the the marquee event and a magical night of Street Fighter action for years to come.