Real world martial arts and fighting sports have existed for hundreds (or in some cases thousands) of years longer than video fighting games, but it’s funny when we start to see reality resemble that exaggerated art.
The Olympic Games Paris 2024 are now underway with the toughest competitors from around the globe coming together in hopes to prove they are the best like we just saw with Evo 2024 on our end last weekend, and we wouldn’t be too surprised to learn if a certain fencer is a fan of fighting games too.
There’s a particular viral clip that’s been making its way across the internet today from the Olympics in a match between France’s Sebastien Patrice and Germany’s Matyas Szabo.
In the Men’s Sabre Individual Table of 16 (so basically like our top 16), Patrice found himself on the verge of elimination, so he started to perform some rather interesting and apparently unexpected tactics to stay in the game.
After dashing back at round start, Patrice starts essentially neutral jumping and swinging his sabre back and forth.
Szabo apparently hasn’t been working on his anti-air game because he then starts to back off and go on the defensive himself.
And like the wisest fighting game masters will tell you, if they don’t stop your jump ins, keep jumping at them.
A wise @DeAnthrax once asked, “Is fencing neutral?”pic.twitter.com/2Wc8aLcMQO
— Felax the Lechonk Trainer (@relaxfelax) July 27, 2024
Patrice leaps, now moving forward seven times in a row, but never really going for the big strike in that time.
Instead, the French fencer goes for what we’d basically call an empty jump low by waiting until he lands and crouches with a very quick lunge that Szabo apparently didn’t see coming to which Patrice then celebrates.
is what players mean when they say “skip neutral”?
— 4est_ Lumina (@TehTechnoGuy) July 27, 2024
This of course caught the attention of the fighting game community comparing the tactics to Wi-Fi warrior Kens in Street Fighter, King of Fighters short hops and Super Smash Bros. legend Liquid|Hungrybox calling this “literally Melee Marth.”
Although jumping around like this is apparently a legal tactic in Olympic fencing, it doesn’t really seem to be something that’s used very often at all.
There is no difference between an Olympic level fencer and the online wifi Ken who only does jump-ins that you consistently fail to anti-air. https://t.co/tGxqA1Ovs7
— Minovsky (@MinovskyArticle) July 27, 2024
That goes especially with the long sabre class of the competition where the extended range usually means rounds end in like 1–3 seconds instead of taking 10 like it did here.
Competition fencing like this goes through multiple rounds where one person earns a point by landing the first legal hit. The setting is then reset until one fencer reaches 15 points at the Olympics.
Since Szabo was already up to 14 points, Patrice didn’t really have anything else to lose, so it looks like he bet it all on his jump ins to stay in the race.
While that would bring him up to 13 points, Szabo would quickly recover and score the final hit and move on to the Table of 8.
this is literally melee Marth https://t.co/cCwUQ3Rb9g
— hungrybox (@LiquidHbox) July 27, 2024
He too, however, would end up falling in an extremely close set to Egypt’s Ziad Elsissy, who would just end up barely missing the bronze medal.
It would instead be South Korea’s Oh Sanguk taking home the gold followed by Tunisia’s Fares Ferjani scoring the silver.
Now if the sport looked more like this all of the time, perhaps the FGC would get much more invested where they could then complain about the lame tactics in that sport too.