LAS VEGAS --- Another year has come and gone for the Evolution Championship Series, the world's most prestigious fighting game tournament. Over the three-day event, thousands converged on Sin City to see if they could put their names in the history books as Evo champion. New countries shined. New games took center stage. And one player from Pakistan became a tournament legend, showcasing his faith on the biggest stage in fighting games.
Here are the five takeaways from Evo 2019.
"Without faith, I am nothing"
Nearly every year at Evo, there is one moment that defines the tournament. Daigo Umehra's parry against Justin Wong in 2004. Daigo and Wong meeting five years later when Evo needed its two biggest stars the most, ushering in a new era of fighting games in the finals of debut Street Fighter IV. Juan "Hungrybox" Debiedma finally reaching the mountaintop in 2016, pulling himself from the brink of defeat to win the Super Smash Bros. Melee title. Dominique "SonicFox" McLean running around the stage with reckless abandon in his iconic fox head, after winning the inaugural Dragon Ball FighterZ last year.
These moments make Evo the greatest fighting game tournament in the world.
At the Mandalay Bay Events Center on Sunday, 23-year-old Arslan "Arslan Ash" Siddique of Pakistan fell to his knees on center stage after winning the Tekken 7 grand final, praying, the crowd around him applauding. A new superstar was made from a country not known for its video game prowess.
"Without faith, I am nothing," Arslan Ash said in a post-match interview with ESPN's Jacob Wolf about being Muslim.
Coming into the event, Tekken 7 was riding a wave of momentum, growing more popular with age. When the game was released in 2015 and premiered at Evo that same year, it only had 458 entrants. Four years later, the signups have almost quadrupled, at 1,885. The game's endless depth with its three-dimensional fighting layout, sidestepping and all, has made this edition of the long-running fighting game series a must-watch for casual and diehard fighting game consumers alike.
Arslan Ash first brought attention onto himself when he won the Tekken 7 championship at Evo Japan earlier this year. The question following his historic win in Japan wasn't if he would be a contender for the crown in Vegas, but whether he would make it to the tournament at all. He had trouble with his visa getting to Japan along with a multitude of other travel issues, which put his attendance at the original Evo uncertain.
Thanks to the efforts of Sherry Nhan and eFightPass, a program created by her to help attain visas for esports players, Arslan Ash was approved to travel to Las Vegas for what would become the biggest moment of his career, defeating South Korea's Bae "Knee" Jae-Min in the grand final.
The biggest moment of Evo this year.
One of the biggest moments in Evo history.
Sonic Fox adds to his Evo legacy
While Dominque "SonicFox" McLean didn't go back-to-back in Dragon Ball FighterZ, the 21-year-old American still had a weekend in Las Vegas to remember.
In the three tournaments SonicFox entered at Evo, his worst finish came in his least experienced game, Soulcalibur VI, where he finished 33rd out of 746 entrants.
SonicFox came off his Soulcalibur finish with the goal of becoming the first player to win two major Evo tournaments in a single day with DBZ and Mortal Kombat 11, and if not for archrival Goichi "GO1" Kishida, it would have become reality. The two players squared off in the grand final of the 1,191-person bracket and had an instant classic with over 100,000 fans tuning in online to watch the rematch of their 2018 clash when SonicFox was crowned champion.
This year, it was the Japanese player's turn for revenge, GO1 vanquishing SonicFox in the winners final before taking the championship by beating him again in the grand final. Following GO1's emotional victory, the first person to congratulate him was SonicFox himself, the former champion lifting GO1's arm into the air to the roar of the live crowd.
SonicFox then capped his Evo by going wire-to-wire in Mortal Kombat, a game he's undefeated in at Evo since first winning a title in 2015. SonicFox defended his Mortal Kombat throne with a win over Ryan "Dragon" Walker in the grand final. Unlike the DBZ final, this one was all SonicFox, making quick work of the rest of the field just before the clock turned midnight Saturday night.
With his MK11 win, SonicFox now sits at five Evo championships over his illustrious career with many more years ahead of him. Even without the double-DBZ win or the two titles in one day, SonicFox's placement in the pantheon of fighting game players is now written in stone, if it wasn't already.
Along with the likes of Daigo Umehara and Justin Wong, the name Dominique "SonicFox" McLean will forever be held in the same reverence.
Third time's a charm for MKLeo
The No. 1 Super Smash Bros. Ultimate player in the world, Leonardo "MKLeo" Lopez Perez, was on the ropes a lot in Vegas. The teenage Mexican phenom was expected to cruise into Sunday's grand final. That didn't happen. Takuto "Kameme" Ono of Japan knocked MKLeo into the losers bracket on Saturday, bringing back bad memories of previous Evo tournaments. In 2017, MKLeo made it all the way to the grand final before falling to Gonzalo "ZeRo" Barrios. The next year, he didn't even get the opportunity to make up for his close call, sidelined from the biggest tournament of the year due to a sudden case of chickenpox.
For the third year in a row, MKLeo was on the cusp of letting another chance of winning an Evo trophy fade away. The best in the world fought, however, and with no safety set to save him if he got upset a second time, MKLeo plowed through the lower bracket, making it all the way to his second Evo grand final with the No. 2 player in the world, USA's Gavin "Tweek" Dempsey, standing in his way.
Once more, MKLeo was at a disadvantage, quickly falling 0-2 in the series and one game away from seeing his vice grip on Ultimate taken from him. This prompted another flurry from the world's best as the numbers on Twitch jumped over 200,000 to see MKLeo make a comeback for the ages. As MKLeo took the fifth set in the grand final and reset the bracket after reverse-sweeping Tweek, it already felt over. Tweek attempted to muster his comeback to no avail, and for MKLeo, third time was the charm, the Evo trophy going back home to Mexico.
On the same night, MKLeo demonstrated without a shadow of a doubt who the best player in the world is and Super Smash Bros Ultimate proved its legitimacy as a game worthy of closing out the biggest night of the year for fighting games.
Soulcalibur makes most of its spotlight
Along with staple games like Street Fighter, there are always one or two that get their chance to make a statement at Evo. This usually comes in the form of an older game riding a sudden swell of fan support, like Super Smash Bros. Melee. After Soulcalibur VI was released in October, this year was a prime opportunity for one of the cornerstone games of the FGC to have another chance at the bright lights of Evo. Although the game didn't get the best time slot -- the tournament lasted one day, while others were spread out over the weekend -- the diehard fans turned out deep into the night Friday to watch the kickoff of the weekend's festivities.
The winners final between Japan's Yuta "Yuttoto" Sudo and France's Jérémy "Skyll" Bernard wasn't the most-watched match of the weekend, but it turned out to be the closest. What started as a mere fighting game match between two of the best Soulcalibur players in the world evolved into a battle of wills, with each player taking advantage before their opponent struck back to even the series. Their war of attrition came as close as it could -- tied at two wins in a best-of-five, tied with two round victories, tied in damage -- both hanging on by a health bar pixel. Yuttoto got the fated final hit to take the marathon of a match en route to winning the tournament, beating American Zain "Bluegod" Tibeishat to become the world champion of Soulcalibur VI.
Overall, the tournament was a fitting beginning to Evo and a strong audition for Soulcalibur VI for next year when tournament founder Joey Cuellar has to decide which eight games make the cut for the main stage at Mandalay.
New countries shine in Vegas
Bahrain, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates aren't the first countries to come to mind when you think of esports, but that might change coming off of Evo 2019.
Bahrain's Sayed "Tekken Master" Hashim Ahmed, 24, is a familiar face in the fighting game community. His breakthrough moment as a player came in 2016 when he took on SonicFox in the grand finals of Mortal Kombat X at Evo, narrowly losing to the five-time champion. After bouncing around other Netherrealm game, Injustice 2, Tekken Master returned to Mortal Kombat with the release of MK11, making it into the top 16 at Community Effort Orlando a month ago in Florida. At this year's Evo, Tekken Master made it back to the medal podium, finishing third in the MK11 tournament with, once again, SonicFox taking it all.
On Sunday, it was Algerian-born Adel "Big Bird" Anouche representing the UAE who took center stage for an emerging esports country in Street Fighter V, the Rashid technician making a run from the losers bracket to the grand finals against Masato "Bonchan" Takahashi. Like Tekken Master, though, a championship wasn't meant to be, failing to reset the bracket and losing to Bonchan's Karin after taking the first two games in the best-of-five. Still, the second-place finish puts Big Bird in a strong position heading into the Capcom Tour Finals later this fall. And, as aforementioned, Arslan Ash did what the other two players could not, bringing Pakistan its first Evo world championship with his ascendant victory in Tekken 7.
Evo featured players from 80 different countries, and that number should only continue to rise as the video game industry grows across the world. Gone are the days where only a couple countries populated the top of the leaderboard. The biggest takeaway of Evo 2019 is that the tournament, not just its offshoot Japanese counterpart, is increasingly international, and it's a very good thing.