Legendary Japanese player Daigo “The Beast” Umehara continues to be in top form with a win at the Blink All Star Challenger Japan tournament last weekend.
This is Daigo’s second tournament win after he secured his spot at Capcom Cup 2020, by winning the CPT Asia East 1 online qualifier.
The stacked competition featured top-level talent such as Hajime “Tokido” Taniguchi, Keita “Fuudo” Ai, Masato “Bonchan” Takahashi, Naoto “sako” Sako, Tsunehiro “gachikun” Kanamori, and Atsushi “Fujimura” Fujimura.
During the Blink All Star Challenge Japan competition, Daigo faced rising talent and former EVO BlazBlue 2017 champion Ryusei “Ryusei” Ito. The two matched up in the winners’ final, where Daigo showed that his skills and reactions are still as sharp as ever.
After being thrown to the ground, Ryusei went for a quick-rise wake-up, ex-dive kick in an attempt to catch Daigo off guard. Instead, Daigo instantly activated his V-Trigger that set up an ex-Flash Kick into a critical art finish and earned him his spot in the grand finals.
After being handed his first loss in the tournament, Ryusei bounced back by reverse sweeping Gachikun in the losers’ final 3-2. Ryusei then found early success during his grand final match against Daigo by utilizing Urien’s Aegis Reflector attacks, which broke through Guile’s defensive shell.
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In response, Daigo maintained his composure and focused on his neutral game, which gave him the life lead after getting multiple counter hits. Ryusei made a valiant comeback-round-win attempt by trapping Daigo in the corner. However, after a mistimed ex-Headbutt, Daigo took the 2-1 lead in the set.
Daigo closed out the match, landing a clutch low kick into V-Trigger activation critical art finish. What’s even more impressive is that Daigo pulled the combo off online, which goes to show his stream training sessions have kept him at the highest level of competition.
With Daigo’s first place finish, he has earned US$3,500 in prize money. Meanwhile, Ryusei walked away with US$1,000.
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