MenaRD makes his mark in SF history by winning Capcom Cup 2017
Street Fighter V was a change in direction for the franchise. The game wanted to draw in a larger audience and because of that desire made the game more casual friendly. Now that we are 2 years into the game’s lifespan, we’ve seen the culmination of that idea as more newcomers have risen to the top. Du “NuckleDu” Dang was the vanguard of that wave and others soon followed suite from all over the world. At the end of the Capcom Cup 2017 we had a mix of old and new as 4 players were left in the entire field: Saul Leonardo “MenaRD” Mena, Naoki “moke” Nakayama, Hajime “Tokido” Taniguchi, and Naoki “Nemo” Nemoto.
MenaRD and moke represented the new generation of fighting game players. MenaRD hailed from the Dominican Republic and was able to qualify through multiple top placings nearing the end of 2017 to make it here. At the tournament, his aggressive birdie style demolished it’s way through the circuit. This mirrored Moke’s own run through the year. Moke had been known as Japan’s top online Rashid player, but he hadn’t put that skill onto LAN until the latter half of the year where he most notably made a top 5 run at EVO 2017.
Opposite of them were the two veterans, Tokido and Nemo. Tokido’s first year in SFV were a number of near misses as he continually got second place to other champions at the time such as NuckleDu and Seonwoo “Infiltration” Lee. This turned around this year as he was able to get over the line which culminated in his victory at EVO 2017. While Tokido is an incredible player, part of his success comes from being sponsored by EchoFox which gave him the support to travel the world to get his CPT points. Nemo didn’t have that kind of luxury and he instead bet it all on one shot.
Nemo entered the Last Chance Qualifier with 255 other players and came through the death pool barely defeating Infiltration in the end. He then proved that his feat was no fluke as he went deep into the bracket until he was one of the last four remaining. Nemo then defeated moke to make it to the loser’s finals. Even though moke’s aggression had overwhelmed his opponent’s all tournaments, he was on the receiving end and couldn’t stop Nemo. While Nemo could overwhelm moke, he couldn’t stop MenaRD’s offense in turn.
In the end it came down to a rematch of the winner’s finals between Tokido and MenaRD. On one side we had the young up-and-comer from the Dominican Republic. On the other hand we had Tokido, one of the five gods of Japan, the EVO 2017 Champion, and one of the most legendary players in the FGC scene. It was a battle between the young and the old. MenaRD had beaten other legends to get this far including: Xian, Daigo, and Ryota “Kazunoko” Inoue. But Tokido was on another level and had proved it in their last battle against each other.
In a way it mirrored Tokido’s EVO 2017 title when he had faced off against Victor “Punk” Woodley. Punk was considered the best player in the world, but he was incredibly young. On that finals stage he crumbled under the pressure while Tokido elevated his play in order to take Punk down.
But MenaRD was made of sterner stuff than Punk. He didn’t fade out of the finals despite going down early in the first set of the finals. He kept his cool and was able to reset the bracket 3–2. In the second set. In the third game, Tokido whiffed an overhead in a round that could have secured him the second game to lead 2–1. Instead MenaRD won the set taking the lead 2–1 and took the fourth game to win Capcom Cup 2017.
Tokido nearly won both EVO 2017 and Capcom Cup 2017, but in the end the new generation could not be denied. It wasn’t the one people were expecting in Punk, but MenaRD proved his worth and makes his first mark in Street Fighter history.
