It’s the biggest prize pool for a Street Fighter tournament to date.
A legend has been made as Kakeru becomes the Gamers8 Street Fighter 6 Invitational champion.
32 of the best SF6 players came to Riyadh last weekend to fight for the lion’s share of a 1,000,000 USD prize pool. The group stage was a slugfest as the volatile nature of SF6 got the better of many players. Expected names such as Sim “NL” Gun and Benjamin “Problem X” Simon fell short of making it into the playoffs. On the other hand, players like Saul Leonrdo “MenaRD” Mena II and Victor “Punk” Woodley, familiar names from the recently concluded Evo 2023, continue to show their prowess in SF6 by making deep runs into the playoffs bracket.
Kakeru, who finished fifth in Evo 2023, managed to stay in the winners’ side up until he fell in the winners’ finals 3-0 to Amjad “AngryBird” Al-Shalabi, hot off the heels of his Evo 2023 victory. After a close 3-2 win over Punk in the losers’ finals, Kakeru was ready to get his revenge.
The first few games looked better for Kakeru, but AngryBird was an Evo champion and he wouldn’t go down easy. As the matches went on, however, Kakeru was slowly exerting more control in the neutral, becoming a wall that AngryBird couldn’t break down.
As Kakeru reset the series 3-1, it was clear that AngryBird was running out of options. Any offense that he tried to mount was met with perfectly timed pokes and even more perfectly timed parries. Kakeru’s defense in a game as wild as SF6 was mind-boggling and in methodical fashion, he takes the grand finals reset 3-0 to raise the Gamers8 trophy.
Banner image from Gamers8 Esports on Twitter.
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