Now that the dust has settled in Anaheim, California after the Capcom Cup and the Street Fighter scene shifts into the offseason, a few questions still linger in the air. Du "NuckleDu" Dang may have won the Cup, but as we await Season 2 of the competitive circuit and prepare to grind matches on the new patch, we wonder: who is truly the top dog in SFV?
Coming into the championship , there were certainly favorites, top seeds and tournament winners expected to perform well. Hajime "Tokido" Taniguchi, Seonwoo "Infiltration" Lee, Justin Wong, Yusuke Momochi -- four players who looked set to climb the brackets, but all fell short of the prize. Three of them didn't even win a game en route to elimination. Meanwhile, the grand finals featured relative surprises in Ricki Ortiz and Du, who, despite positive on-site analysis were less favored than the titans of Street Fighter.
Many speculated about how the top players could have dropped so fast, citing challenges with staying consistent in Street Fighter V. One of the Cup's competitors, Ryan "FChamp" Ramirez, sees it more as a growing level of competition.
"The event had 32 world class player;, anyone can lose to any player," Ramirez told ESPN. "It's the World Finals. Going 0-2 on Capcom Cup is not the same as going 0-2 in pools."
With a growing level of competition, it's not so much the raw talent, but ability to handle matchups. When 32 of the best players in the world assemble, it sometimes isn't enough to just be good at your character of choice, but good against others' mains. Kenneth "KBrad" Bradley pointed to Evil Geniuses teammate Justin Wong's elimination as illustration of this.
"[For] Justin, it's all about who you draw first round," said Bradley. "Justin always loses to Chun-Li. It does not matter what Chun-Li it is, Justin will lose to Chun-Li. There is not a question. So Justin went 0-2 the last two years of Capcom Cup, then he got Chun-Li first. So it's like, now he's freaking out, it's all in his head, then he lost to Chun-Li right away."
Tokido, a top player who took second at both Final Round and the NorCal Regionals, ran into trouble against DR Ray, whose main training partner is Caba, a top-tier Ryu player who plays a similar style to Tokido. Looking at Infiltration, the Evo champion, commentator David "Ultradavid" Philip Graham believed it might be an issue of visibility that brought down the champ.
"Infiltration dominated the first few months of Street Fighter V, but hasn't looked nearly that strong since the summer," Graham told ESPN. "I think he figured out how to play SFV well earlier than anyone else, but the rest of the top players caught up, the overall strategy shifted, and he didn't keep up. It seemed like he was trying to change by picking new characters in recent events, but I guess that didn't work well enough."
Even for players like Momochi, some of the most dangerous players were lurking in the lower bracket. Hiroyuki "Eita" Nagata can fly under the radar sometimes, but he's a Ken player who placed in the top 8 at Evo, beating Tokido to earn that spot. So when Momochi met Eita in the lower bracket, it was dire straits for the EG player.
"Momochi losing, he was one of the favorites to win the tournament, but he had to fight Eita," said Bradley. "So he fights Eita, and Eita's a crazy style of Ken [while] Momochi's a very slow-paced, calculated fighter ... Those are the people they're going to lose to, so it all depends on who you have to fight in the Capcom Cup."
Even in spite of the high-profile upsets in the first rounds of Capcom Cup, the level of competition at the tournament was some of the highest yet for the fledgling game, released earlier this year.
"Of the top 8 at Capcom Cup, the first four made top 8 at Evo," said Graham. "Fourth place was considered the best player in Japan for quite a while, third place was last year's Capcom Cup champion, second place is one of the best U.S. players ever, and the overall winner has pretty clearly been the best player on Earth the past couple months. It's hard to be consistent in any game, but I don't think SFV is worse for that than most. Instead, it's more that games tend to be volatile early in their lives before people have figured things out. That was the case for SF4, Marvel vs Capcom 3, [and others]."
Ramirez echoed those sentiments, pointing to Street Fighter V's relative youth in the fighting game scene.
"The game has only been out for 10 months," said Ramirez. "Most situations and nuances are not fully optimized yet. I expect more consistent results from top players next season."
In Street Fighter V, more than ever, it's about who shows up to win. Ricki Ortiz tweeted about her practice leading up to the event, and Du dealt with significant trials and tribulations early in the year, according to Graham. Both persevered and found their way to the main stage, a single series from the prize.
"I think it's all about who wants it more," Bradley told ESPN. "So Ricki, Ricki plays, but Ricki doesn't grind a ton. But before this tournament, Ricki was grinding a lot, Ricki was playing every single day. I went over to the house and we played Cammy vs. Chun-Li a lot."
"Both players practiced really hard," said Ramirez. "[In the] two weeks before Capcom Cup they easily clocked in 120 hours each. They beat so many good players along the way, [and] I am so proud of them."
As the scene grows and the game along with it, the top players will continue to be challenged by more newcomers, attracted by the Capcom Pro Tour circuit and the growing number of Street Fighter tournaments. For Graham, it's not about old guard versus new guard, but a matter of understanding the game, gaining confidence and showing up.
"There will always be shifts, of course," said Graham. "No well-made game remains static, either in its strategies or its successful players. As SFV develops and the players come to understand it better, it will settle down a bit. But as above, I don't think it's any more upset-heavy than other games."