An interesting clip has surfaced on Twitter thanks to 00|Phenom. During the 34-second video, Phenom questions BST|Daigo Umehara on who his top 5 characters are in Street Fighter 6.
“With the goat himself, Daigo,” said Phenom in the clip. “So, Daigo. Top five characters in Street Fighter 6?” Daigo pondered for a brief moment, but quickly came back with an answer.
“JP, Luke, Chun-Li, Cammy, and… Guile or Dee Jay,” responded Daigo. Quickly panning the camera back to himself, Phenom then inquired why Ken wasn’t in his top 5 (or top 6).
“Ken? Maybe… sixth or seventh,” continued Daigo. From this, Phenom appeared to feel vindicated by Daigo’s response.
As it turns out, Phenom, NASR|AngryBird, and Chris Tatarian, all top Ken users, have been stating recently that the community’s perception of Ken in Street Fighter 6 may be inflated. More specifically, they’ve all been saying that Ken should be around 7th out of 20 characters on the tier list.
It’s certainly worth noting that AngryBird and Phenom are currently qualified for Capcom Cup X. AngryBird in particular is currently in contention for being considered the best Street Fighter 6 player on the planet right now, especially after his victory at Evo 2023.
Though these competitors have quite a bit of success under their belts this year, the rest of the Street Fighter 6 community have been dismissing opinions that Ken is outside of top 3. As such, the community has since been citing that Ken users are simply attempting to downplay the character’s strengths in hopes of avoiding nerfs with Street Fighter 6’s first major balance patch once Season 2 rolls around.
Regardless, it would appear that Daigo Umehara, a Ken player himself, is on board with the idea that Ken is only the sixth or seventh best combatant in Street Fighter 6. Though Daigo hasn’t been able to qualify for Capcom Cup X like AngryBird and Phenom has, his prestigious name certainly carries quite a bit of weight.
The GOAT, Daigo Umehara gives us his Top 5 strongest characters in Street Fighter 6 pic.twitter.com/XNtBaxZe5F
— Arman Hanjani (@PhenomSF) December 30, 2023
Based on the mannerisms seen in the video, it feels like Phenom is posting the clip with a specific motive in mind. However, it should be noted that Daigo seemingly had to think about where each character currently is in the meta, indicating that this conversation wasn’t rehearsed beforehand.
More than likely, Phenom probably felt confident about how Daigo would respond to the question based on their shared experiences as Ken players.
The last time we took a look at the character usage stats for the competitors currently qualified for Capcom Cup X, it was noted that eight players were able to do so using Ken. This is the second highest amount of representation for a character after Luke who had 10 players qualified the last time we looked at those stats.
Notably, it would probably be very difficult to justify the kinds of changes that most players seem to want for Ken in Season 2 if the opinion that he’s only the sixth or seventh best fighter is accepted by Capcom. As things stand right now, most of the community is prepared for an outcome in which perceived top tiers JP, Luke, and Ken receive nerfs that normalize them with the rest of the roster.
Ultimately though, we’ll have to see what happens from here.