Another year has come and gone, and Capcom crowns another millionaire in the wake of their annual Capcom Cup Street Fighter tournament, this time being the young Japanese pro Sahara!
Joining UMA and Kakeru as millionaires crowned by Capcom for winning the most star studded tournament of the year, Sahara is an interesting case as he wasn’t a relative unknown like UMA nor a truly established veteran like Kakeru, rather he was a dark horse pick; Sahara had only just starting his fighting game journey in the past year as part of fellow pro player Gachikun’s youth initiative. In fact, before playing Street Fighter competitively Sahara was a competitive Valorant and Fortnite player, so it’s quite the switch!
If you were able to catch Capcom Cup either through the official stream, the Battle Hub stream, or other means (Capcom’s handling of the Cup’s broadcast is stirring up enough controversy to justify its own article) you might note Sahara’s character Ed was well represented in the top 8 of the Capcom Cup alongside fellow S tier, Mai. Of the top 8, 4 players played Ed so there was a good chance an Ed was going to take the whole thing, but rather than established favorites Fuudo and Leshar taking it Sahara clutched the title win. Needless to say, no matter how cool Ed is the Street Fighter playerbase is ready for the upcoming balance patch to even things up and bring other characters to Ed and Mai’s power level either through buffing the roster or nerfing the top tiers.
But good character or not, the road was not an easy one for Sahara. Blaz, the young prodigy from Chile and many people’s favorite to win the whole thing, was blazing (heh) a warpath through Capcom Cup. Blaz knocked out fellow favorites Xiaohai and Fuudo in absolute nail-biters and it seemed like victory was all but guaranteed for the youth, but to everyone’s shock Sahara dismantled Blaz and punched his ticket to the finals and eventually the win.
Despite the controversy behind Capcom’s broadcasting, it was a good weekend for Street Fighter gameplay (if you were allowed to watch it) and despite my occasional bellyaching about the game, Capcom Cup reminded us that you can, in fact, have fantastic and fun matches in Street Fighter 6. With Capcom Cup over the Street Fighter playerbase now awaits the release of Alex and, probably more importantly, the massive balance patch that will come with him. Whether or not said patch will include the system changes people want is up in the air, but Street Fighter is still alive and healthy for another year in the big 2026.