This article is part of our Street Fighter series.
What a tournament. Despite many of the top names were bounced prior to the Top 8, the remaining competitors put on one hell of a show for a raucous crowd, giving the fans what they wanted to see. The Street Fighter V Top 8 had it all. There was an incredible losers' bracket run, a reverse sweep, and one Cammy that stood tall above the rest.
Sim "NL" Gun waded through this incredibly stacked Combo Breaker bracket to walk away with the title without dropping a single set all weekend. Yes, he won 10 straight series to hoist that trophy on Sunday night.
Despite appearing in big tournaments such as EVO Japan, Final Round 2018, and NorCal Regionals 2018, NL has won his first Premier tournament of the year, which nets him a cool 700 Capcom Pro Tour points. The win essentially secures his spot in the Capcom Cup this December, meaning he can just spend the next six months gleaning as much information from tournaments as he possibly can.
NL may have picked up the win, but it wasn't exactly a cakewalk. He opened up with match against Masato "Bonchan" Takahashi in the winners' semifinals. Now, you don't see Nash too often anymore these days, but Bonchan made you wonder just why that is, as he pushed NL to the absolute brink in the series. In the end, though, it was NL that got the narrow 3-2 edge to move into the winners' final.
His opponent in the winners' final was none other than Kun Xian "Xian" Ho, the man with an incredible Ibuki (not to be confused with the other incredible Ibuki player, Fujimura "Fujimura" Atsushi, who won Stunfest 2018 last week). After Xian easily dealt with Kong "Verloren" Hyung-suk in a 3-0 sweep during the other winners' semifinal match, many expected a tight match between these two. Well, we got a tight match for a couple games. Xian made some flashy moves early, but NL and his Cammy were far too strong and came away with a 3-1 win to move into the grand final.
Now let's look at this losers' bracket. While there were four players (five if you coun Xian in the losers' final), there was one that was the main story of all. None other than reigning EVO Japan champion, Lee "Infiltration" Seon-woo. He started out in a runback of the Stunfest 2018 winners' final against Li-Wei "Oil King" Lin, but things were much different this time. Infiltration, playing with widely considered low-mid tier Juri, flexed his muscles with a dominating 3-0 sweep. His use of his EX meter was a sight to behold, as he would frequently spend it situations where many would save it just to give himself an edge over Oil King.
Next up for Infiltration was Bonchan, who did a bit better than Oil King by picking up a game, but that was it as the EVO Japan champion moved on without much trouble. Infiltration may utilize the lower tier Juri against Rashad, but he was back in full force with his high-powered Menat from this series on.
On paper, the losers' final should have been a close matchup, as Naoki "Nemo" Nemoto blew through his side of the losers' bracket by sweeping both Ryo "Dogura" Nozaki and Verloren. Despite that, he was simply no match for Infiltration's Menat. The character simply has too many weapons for many people to deal with, and this series was no different.
Once the losers' final got underway, Infiltration was again in full control and looked to be on his way to the grand finals. Playing against the Ibuki of Xian, however, no lead was too safe. Xian seemed unfazed from being in a 2-0 hole and rattled off a ridiculous three straight wins to pull off the reverse sweep.
It simply seems as though Ibuki has too many weapons for Infiltration to handle, as he's now 0-3 against the character in the last two weeks. Xian, however, is continuing the trend set by Fujimura last week and demonstrating the strengths of this character.
That brings us to the grand finals. Xian, the ridiculous Ibuki, against NL, the ridiculous Cammy. Despite NL taking a fairly easy 3-1 win during the winners' final, he put up a hell of a fight in the grand finals.
Xian drew first blood, taking Game 1 despite having dropped the opening round. Moving into Game 2, Xian was content to never let up on the pressure. Just look at this setup that looked damn near unblockable.
Unlike Infiltration, however, NL seemed unbothered by the relentless pressure that Xian was putting out. He responded by winning the next two rounds of that game to even up the series at one all. NL then waded through yet another close game to put himself one game from victory.
Xian wasn't content to let this thing slip away in another 3-1 set, though, and picked up two quick rounds to force a decisive Game 5. NL took the first round of that final game, but found himself at a sizeable life deficit in round 2. But remember that he was playing Cammy. All it took was a throw, two combos (one into a Critical Art), and a crouching light punch to stun Xian and secure the Combo Breaker 2018 trophy.
Check the final placements below:
- 1. NL (700 points)
- 2. Xian (270 points)
- 3. Infiltration (200 points)
- 4. Nemo (160 points)
- 5. Bonchan (130 points)
- 5. Verloren (130 points)
- 7. Oil King (100 point)
- 7. Dogura (100 point)
