Derek “Idom” Ruffin, an unsponsored and self-supported Street Fighter V player has pulled off one of the biggest upsets, defeating CPT number one ranked player, Victor “Punk” Woodley, in the grand finals of the Capcom Cup.
After losing in the winners final, iDom battled his way back up to the grand final where he came back from 2-0 down in the first set, pulling off the reverse sweep to reset the bracket, and then taking the final set 3-1 to win the title.
Set one
Going into the first set, Punk was full of confidence, having gone undefeated all weekend. Rather than his usual Karin, he went with Cammy for the first game, catching iDom off-guard.
Punk continued to make the right decisions and took a quick 2-0 lead against iDom, although some cracks were starting to show in his game, as he missed a few hit confirm Cannon Spikes.
Down 0-2, iDom finally got going, making good use of command throw to open up his offense.
With Punk wary of the command throw, he started playing less aggressively, and switched over to Karin for game four.
At 2-2, iDom was clearly in Punk’s head, and the world number one clearly looked rattled, dropping multiple hit confirms. iDom took advantage and cleaned up to reset the bracket, taking the first set 3-2.
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Set two
iDom continued to dominate and quickly took the first game of the reset.
iDom ended up winning five games in a row as Punk continued to struggle, dropping combos and confirms left and right.
At tournament point, Punk finally managed to compose himself and managed to win game four.
Surprisingly, despite being up 2-1, iDom made the surprising choice to switch to Poison. However, Punk had trouble getting past the long reach of Poison’s whip and ate a ton of damage dashing in.
With game four tied at 1-1, Punk started the round aggressively, and looked to hold the advantage, but let iDom escape the corner, and once again ran into a whip combo, which let iDom take the game, and with it, the biggest prize in pro Street Fighter.
For his first-place finish, iDom took home a massive US$250,000 cash prize. He will also get to design a Champion’s Choice skin for the character of his choice. Meanwhile, Punk secured himself US$50,000 as the runner-up of the tournament.
After the tournament, Street Fighter V producer Yoshinori Ono took to the stage and announced new changes for the 2020 Capcom Pro Tour.
The Pro Tour has been mostly unchanged for seven years now, but next year, Capcom has decided to change things up by increasing the number of qualifying spots to 40 players instead of 32. The tour will also be split into two seasons with eight players qualifying from each season.
CPT points will also reset after the Game Over Tournament, which will take place in July 2020. 22 players who win the World Warrior challenges will also advance to Capcom Cup 2020, which will be held in Paris, France.
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