The top 8 Street Fighter 6 action for the Esports World Cup qualifier event at DreamHack Summer 2024 this past weekend was absolutely bonkers. From unique characters populating the entire top 8 (and not just Luke and Ken as far as the eye can see) to incredible showings for characters old and new, this tournament’s finals were a must-watch.
In addition to all of the hype, viewers also witnessed an incredibly heartbreaking combo drop for the set win come at the hands of DFM|Itabashi Zangief. Despite what it looked like to virtually everyone who saw it, it appears that this big drop wasn’t actually what the majority of us believed it was.
To set the stage here, Itabashi Zangief began finals day on the winners side of the bracket and faced off against Evo champion HB|Kawano and his powerful Akuma. The two strong competitors went back and forth in this set until it came down to the last game, last round, and both even stayed fairly close on health throughout the first portion of the round.
About 30 in-game seconds into this final round, Itabashi Zangief whiffed Gief’s OD Lariat as an anti-air attempt for Akuma’s Demon Flip, which caused Kawano to land behind Itazan and score a devastating punish into level 3 super.
Itazan sat with just a sliver of Drive Gauge left after this interaction, and on wake up ate two OD fireballs from Akuma as a means of avoiding burnout. This saved his life here, as Kawano then attempted a Drive Impact to burn Itazan out and score the stun, but by this point the Gief player had enough Drive Meter to perfect parry the Drive Impact attempt and counter with a command throw.
A quick Drive Rush sequence following this play allowed Itazan to pressure a now burnt out Kawano with blockstrings, pushing him close enough to the corner to allow a Drive Impact to knock him back just far enough to hit the wall and get stunned. And that’s exactly what happened, as if the planets and fates aligned for Itazan, rolling out the red carpet for him to close out the whole set.
Itazan almost made the comeback of the year pic.twitter.com/b2zhtvDHmQ
— HiFight(ハイファイト) (@HiFightTH) June 16, 2024
Despite having a clear opening and enough meter to win the game with a basic combo into level 2 super, Itazan somehow dropped this crucial combo, and as a result allowed Kawano to come back and chip the Gief player out with a swift OD Goshoryuken.
Now, to everyone who watched this whole thing play out, it became abundantly clear very quickly that Itabashi Zangief tried to pull off the following combo: jumping heavy punch, headbutt (forward + heavy punch), Hell Stab (down-forward + medium punch), level 2 super. This is a very common and powerful punish combo for Zangief.
If you’ve never played Zangief in Street Fighter 6 before, then allow me to explain to you that cancelling into level 2 super from Hell Stab is incredibly tricky and honestly, it’s a real pain in the ass. Even on a pad, going from a down-forward input to a double quarter-circle-forward input all within the tiny cancel window is much harder to do consistently than it might seem, and a lot of fellow players on social media quickly pointed out how hard that cancel is and how it is totally understandable that Itabashi could drop that combo there on the big stage with a ton of pressure riding on his shoulders.
So that’s it, right? Case closed? Not exactly…
Apparently, Itabashi Zangief was not actually trying to go for the Hell Stab combo there in that moment. According to Jiyuna, who read through some of Itabashi’s tweets on the matter and translated them into English, Itazan was actually trying to go for the easier combo as a means of NOT dropping the set-winning play…
“So after all the talk about Hellstab > Level 2 yesterday, Itazan confirms he actually did NOT try to go for that combo,” Jiyuna began. “He did the tournament classic of choosing a safer BNB (Headbutt > Lvl2), but instead dropping it because it’s not what he normally practices. Ouch “
So after all the talk about Hellstab > Level 2 yesterday, Itazan confirms he actually did NOT try to go for that combo. He did the tournament classic of choosing a safer BNB (Headbutt > Lvl2), but instead dropping it because it’s not what he normally practices. Ouch https://t.co/CsPhwNDm1Q
— J I Y U N A (@jiyunaJP) June 17, 2024
This revelation makes the whole thing even more devastating. Itabashi made the right call in going for the easier combo in that situation, however, it just goes to show how strong tournament nerves can be sometimes.
Digging into things even further, FGC lab monster Javits went in and tested the simpler combo to see if it would have KO’d Kawano in that situation. The results show that had Itazan landed the combo he went for, he would have won the set and moved on in the winners bracket.
I was just curious and tested this. He might not have needed to do a hellstab combo for the kill. pic.twitter.com/djHnrUQwZb
— Javits Arias (@jav1ts) June 17, 2024
It’s not all doom and gloom for Itabashi Zangief, though, as the top notch competitor has still qualified for the Esports World Cup later this Summer. He also put on an absolutely tremendous performance with a character who didn’t get a lot of love in Season 1, adding further evidence to the claims that Zangief is very strong here in Season 2.
