Daigo Umehara is one of the most accomplished fighting game players of all time. Nicknamed “The Beast” for how much of a powerhouse he is in competitive fighters, Umerhara is always a threat whether you run into him online in ranked or at a tournament.
With Street Fighter 6, the game’s Capcom Fighters Network (CFN) now gives us access to all kinds of incredibly interesting stats that we can look at for not only ourselves, but for the pro players as well. Taking a closer look at these sections for Daigo grants us insight into The Beast’s experience in battle, and one of the most important takeaways we found within the CFN is which characters in SF6 Daigo does the best against, and which ones give him the most trouble.
Now, when it comes to tier lists in fighting games (or any kind of tier list, I suppose), these charts are very much subjective. They are often determined by a variety of different criteria, including personal experience, specific character ability, representation in tournaments, overall success both in online ranked matches and major events, and more.
But going beyond overall tier lists, one factor that provides some very interesting insight that isn’t often looked at is which characters some of the best players in the world do well against and struggle with most. This isn’t necessarily indicative of tier placements since there are all kinds of reasons why one player might have a hard time with a specific fighter, but it really paints a fascinating picture of our favorite players.
In order to find out which characters in Street Fighter 6 that Daigo has the most trouble with, I went in and looked up his profile on the CFN. By clicking in, I was able to filter and take a closer look at the breakdown of Daigo’s online matches (per character), and the win rates he has for each fighter on the cast currently.
Drilling things down even further, I set the filter to give me only Daigo’s ranked match stats with his main, Ken, since this is the main serious mode to play and is used very regularly for competitive training. I also made sure to include his lifetime Street Fighter 6 stats and look at the numbers from all ranked phases that have happened in the game so far.
Here’s what I found.
When it comes to the characters Daigo has the least success against, it appears as though he has issues with some of the heavier rushdown fighters in the game. Of his bottom three, Daigo has a win rate of 59.54% against Kimberly and a 57.04% when fighting Rashid in the 346 and 270 matches he’s played against them, respectively.
Even more surprising is that Daigo’s second worst win rate overall in ranked matches is against Lily, coming in at 57.08%. It’s likely that this particular stat is as low as it is because Lily is very scarce when it comes to representation both online and in major events, and when Daigo does run into a Lily player, it is likely one of the best in the world like HibikiTheBeast (who just defeated Daigo at Capcom Pro Tour 2023 Japan).
On the contrary, Daigo finds the most success when coming up against some of the game’s zoners. Above all else, Daigo has the best win rate against Guile, which isn’t surprising as he spent a major portion of Street Fighter 5 and part of Street Fighter 6 playing as the flat-topped fighter.
Though he has some solid rush down pressure at his disposal, Ryu does incorporate quite a bit of zoning into his gameplan as well. Ryu happens to be the character Daigo does second best against, and lastly we have Dhalsim as his #3 best match up.
Another very interesting detail was sitting there, out in the open, in Daigo’s CFN profile. As you might imagine, Daigo has played the most ranked matches against “The Big 3” in Street Fighter 6 as they are incredibly popular and are often considered the top 3 in the game.
When it comes to Luke, Ken, and JP, it appears that The Beast actually does the best against Luke while struggling the most when facing JP. At the time of writing this, the fighting game legend has played around 1,000 matches against each of these characters, and has nearly a 70% win rate over Luke while beating JP only about 63% of the time.
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