Hiya!

Yesterday was a big day for the fighting game community. No, we didn’t have a major tournament or anything like that. What we did get was probably one of the most anticipated battles in Street Fighter history: a first-to-10 match between the man behind EVO Moment #37, Daigo “The Beast” Umehara, going against one of the best, if not the best Street Fighter players competing today, MenaRD. It was around a year ago when MenaRD issued a challenge to Daigo Umehara, not out of anger, but out of respect. Daigo is a legend in the fighting game community, winning multiple tournaments, such as the prestigious EVO tournament for several years. For MenaRD, doing a first-to-10 with The Beast would be mostly an honor but it’s also to see how well he can stack up against someone who he believes is the best player ever.

So, the fighting game community decided to make an event out of this: EVO Legends Live. Okay, it’s actually called Kemeno Michi, which roughly translates to “beast road” or something like that. Not only did it feature Daigo vs MenaRD, it also had other “grudge matches” including GO1 vs Laggia in Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves and Arslan Ash vs. Chikurin in Tekken 8. Now, of course, the main event was going to be Daigo vs MenaRD but I fully expected the other matches to be really good. So, I was generally on board with watching the undercard. After all, good things come to those who wait.

This, unfortunately, was something I wish I didn’t have to go through. Not the matches themselves… but the waiting! The event seems to have started very late as the first match, GO1 vs Laggia in a first-to-7 in Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, started around 90 minutes after the stream started! That’s a long time to be waiting and, honestly, I couldn’t wait that long as I had errands to do! I was hoping to catch some of the matches before I had to do them but, because of this long delay, I wasn’t able to watch it live! Oh, well. Thankfully, EVO Events, the channel that hosted the live stream had all of the matches available when I got back. Now I don’t have to slog through all the waiting!

Anyway, the first match was, like I said, GO1 vs Laggia in Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. This was kind of a grudge match as Laggia was the one who beat GO1 during the SNK World Championship Finals last year, netting him a whopping $1,500,000 prize! While there really isn’t any bad blood between them (as far as I know), I can’t help but think the loss had to have stung a little for GO1.

The match started off with GO1’s Khushnood Butt Marco Rodrigues taking 2 matches fairly quickly against Laggia’s Gato. GO1 was just on point during these matches as he was consistently hitconfirming his attacks into supers and just out-footies-ing Laggia. Laggia did start to get lucky as he would then eke out the next 2 matches in some very close rounds but it did look like he was getting more comfortable against GO1’s pressure. He was also getting good at using Gato’s command throw, leading to big damage.

It went on like this a while. GO1 would win several games and then Laggia would just make a comeback. Eventually, each one of them had 6 wins under their belt, making it all the way to the final match. Even during the final match, things were really close as GO1 won the first round and then Laggia winning the next, meaning this “grudge match” went the distance; final game, final round. Ultimately, GO1 won in a very hard fought set!

This was much more fun than I expected. Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is a game I don’t play seriously because it’s just too hard to get too at, in my opinion. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy some high level Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves action, though, and this match delivered! I do think the main reason why GO1 edged out Laggia was because he was able to anti-air much more reliably. If Laggia made GO1 frightened to jump in with a couple of anti-airs, maybe he could have won this.

Next up was Arslan Ash vs Chikurin in Tekken 8. Now, this isn’t much of a “grudge match” as this was just billed as Arslan Ash going to Japan to beat the current Tekken 8 EVO Japan champion. Arslan Ash first started with Zafina while Chikurin picked Clive. Simply put, it just seemed like Arslan Ash just couldn’t get anything going with his Zafina as he lost 2 straight games. He then tried switching to Nina but he lost 3 more games, giving Chikurin a massive 5-0 lead. Arslan Ash then made another character switch to Alisa and this is when he started to get in the groove as he mounted a 4 game winning streak using her.

However, Chikurin seemed to adapt to Arslan Ash’s Alisa after those 4 games as he managed to beat her finally, putting him in match point. Then, for some reason, Arslan Ash switched characters once more and picked Leo for some reason. This just made him look desperate or as if he ran out of tricks with his Alisa. Ultimately, Arslan Ash’s Leo didn’t stand much of a chance against Chikurin’s Clive won 3 straight rounds to get his 7th win and win the set.

It just seems like Arslan Ash was woefully unprepared against Chikurin this time around. Even when he went on his winning streak with Alisa, it just seemed like he was getting lucky with those wins. Either that or Chikurin just was too strong for Arslan Ash this time around. Whatever the case, Chikurin handily won this first-to-7.

This leads us to the main event: Daigo Umehara vs. MenaRD. As much of a legend Daigo is in the fighting game community, I do believe he’s lost a step or two. Then again, it just may be that this younger generation of fighting game players are just better than the veterans of yesteryear. After all, some of them, such as Justin Wong, have all but retired from competing. In fact, other pro players, players who love Daigo to bits, didn’t think he stood a chance, which did kind of light a fire against The Beast to try to prove them wrong.

Early on, it actually did seem like Daigo was going to prove his naysayers wrong as he immediately won 2 games with his Akuma, much to the delight of the Japanese crowd. Unfortunately for Daigo and the Japanese crowd, MenaRD and his Blanka were going to play spoiler as he immediately went on a tear by taking 5 games. Now he had a 3 game lead; Mena RD had won 5 games against Daigo’s early 2 games.

The Beast then started to prove why he’s one of the Five God of Fighting Games as he bade his time, taking a quick break before winning 3 more games, tying things with both of them having 5 wins. The next 3 matches were slobberknockers but they all had MenaRD edging out Daigo for the win, thanks to his Blanka shenanigans as well as even overwhelming Daigo’s mental stack somewhat by mixing up throw attempts and meaty attacks. This did give MenaRD 8 games against Daigo’s 5.

Daigo tried to make a comeback by taking the next game in a close match, bringing his score to 6 wins. Unfortunately, in the end, it was all for naught as MenaRD was just too good, hitting perfect parries against Daigo’s projectile attempts very consistently. He then won the next 2 games, getting to 10 games against Daigo’s 6 wins.

MenaRD proved he was the better Street Fighter 6 player this time around. He was just too good during the match as he would hit so many perfect parries, allowing him to convert those into massive damage, which is terrible especially with a low health character such as Akuma. Even so, I do have to give props to Daigo as getting a single match against MenaRD, someone who is at the top of his game, is an accomplishment in my book. He just didn’t get 1 win; he got 6 of them. That’s really something and, while he didn’t win, he did prove he’s still got it.

I will say I really love EVO Legends Live. Well, most of it anyway. I do think the Tekken 8 match between Arslan Ash and Chikurin was underwhelming and, even though I was rooting for Daigo to win, seeing him stand up to MenaRD’s challenge in a spectacular fashion was great. Weirdly enough, my favorite match was the GO1 vs Laggia match in Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves but that’s mostly because it went down to the wire.

Now, if they just didn’t bungle the delay, this would’ve been an excellent show. Take notes on this in the future, please.

Byee!

Did you watch EVO Legends Live? What was your favorite match? Was the wait for it to start as maddening as it was for me? Let me know in the comments section below!