America’s long Street Fighter drought ends with a win at Evo 2024

Evo 2024 wrapped up late Sunday night with Victor “Punk” Woodley beating Adel “Big Bird” Anouche in Street Fighter 6. With his victory, Woodley became the first American to win a mainline Street Fighter tournament at Evo in over 20 years.

The match was nail-bitingly close with Anouche, who made it to the grand finals via the loser’s bracket, beating Woodley 3-0 to reset or “flip” the bracket requiring another best-of-5 match to determine the winner. Their second match went the distance, with each player having two set wins a piece and tied 1-1 in the final match. A well-executed super move from Woodley’s Cammy ended the match and America’s long Street Fighter Evo championship drought along with it.

Americans actually fared exceedingly well at Evo 2024, taking home championships in four of the eight main tournaments: Street Fighter 6 ( Victor “Punk” Woodley), Mortal Kombat 1 (Dominique “SonicFox” McLean), Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising (Aaron “Aarondamac” Godinez), and Guilty Gear Strive (Shamar ”Nitro” Hinds).

Additionally, Street Fighter 6 wasn’t the only Street Fighter tournament at Evo where memorable moments were made. Over in the Street Fighter III: Third Strike tournament, Hayao, a player from Japan, memed his way into our hearts with his infectious enthusiasm and over-the-top celebrations. During one celebration, he bent his body clean in half, touching head to floor in a pose only characters from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure seem capable of. In another, he bust it open on the main stage completing a full split — notable, as Hayao is 41 years old.

But Hayao cemented his place in the Evo history books with playing skill. During the loser’s quarterfinal with only a pixel’s worth of health, Hayao pulled off an astounding parry — in mid-air — then deftly sailed over his opponent’s follow-up super attack to come back and beat his opponent, advancing to the next round.

Hayao unfortunately didn’t win the tournament, falling in his next match to finish in fourth place. But his incredible display of skill was so electrifying that some are referring to it as “Evo Moment 38,” or the spiritual successor to Evo Moment 37 — perhaps the greatest clip of fighting game competition of all time. Even though he didn’t win, Hayao still won.

There was a smattering of other hype Evo 2024 moments. Twitch streamer LilyPichu won a Tekken 8 show match against the game’s producer Katsuhiro Harada. Tekken 8 resurrected the franchise’s longtime villain Heihachi Mishima despite Harada remarking more than once that the character was well and truly dead. Evo also plans to add two new events in 2025 with the first Evo Awards taking place in Los Angeles and Evo France, marking the tournament’s first appearance in Europe. Evo is already the biggest, most exciting fighting game tournament in the world, and it’s good to see that it continues to grow.