After a weekend filled with triumph and upsets, only one player walks away a millionaire.
Write this down for the history books — Taiwan’s Wang “UMA” Yuan-hao is the Capcom Cup X champion. Not only is he the first Street Fighter 6 Capcom Cup champion but he’s also the first pro player in history to win a one million USD grand prize fighting game tournament.
Qualifying through the World Warrior Circuit, UMA flew under the radar of many until the tournament started going. He impressed pros and fans by finishing first in his group with a 9-4 match record. But it was in the quarterfinals onwards that he really began peaking.
UMA beat both Mexico’s Juan “Kusanagi” Medrano and South Korea’s Shin “Leshar” Moon-sup in a convincing 3-0 fashion. At the winners’ finals, he was pushed to his limit by Hong Kong’s Won “Chris Wong” Yuk-Cheung, narrowly beating him 3-2, before meeting him again at the grand finals.
It looked grim at first for UMA as Chris Wong seemingly had his number. Chris Wong was able to take the first set 3-0 and force a grand final reset. Unfazed, UMA proved that it was his tournament to take by sweeping aside Chris Wong with his own 3-0.
With UMA’s victory, this relatively unknown pro has etched his name into Capcom Cup history as its first million-dollar champion.
The Rise and Fall of Champions
Capcom Cup X was filled with many unexpected upsets as tournament favorites found themselves getting eliminated one by one. Legends like Diago Umehara, Victor “Punk” Woodley, and Hajime “Tokido” Taniguchi were all filtered out in the Last Chance Qualifiers.
Even former Capcom Cup champions such as Saul “MenaRD” Mena II and Du “NuckleDu” Dang bowed out early on in the tournament. 2018’s champion, Tsunehiro “gachikun” Kanamori, made it all the way to losers’ finals before dropping to Chris Wong 3-2.
It wasn’t all bad news for MenaRD however as his team of Bandits Gaming became the 2023 Street Fighter League world champions, which held its grand finals in the same weekend as Capcom Cup.
Banner photo by Robert Paul/Capcom Fighters.
Related Stories:
Why Capcom Cup’s Million-Dollar Prize Pool is a Big Deal for Fighting Games
6 Months Later: How Has the Street Fighter 6 Meta Developed?
I Got Destroyed in a Fighting Game Tournament and You Should Too