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Ryu wins first Street Fighter 6 Premier tournament in the impressive hands of Kusanagi in front of his home crowd



The French FGC has gotten to witness Kusanagi grow from a young boy to a world-level champion


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Ryu wins first Street Fighter 6 Premier tournament in the impressive hands of Kusanagi in front of his home crowd


Although he’s been the series poster boy since the beginning, Ryu has struggled in the Street Fighter competitive scene for years now in comparison to like Ken and Akuma.






We just, however, got to witness a new champion take Ryu to the very top in what appears to be the character’s Capcom Pro Tour Premier tournament win in Street Fighter 6.









Kusanagi managed to topple the competition of over 450 players at Ultimate Fighting Arena 2024 where it always seems like rising stars get to make their mark.


And he got to do it in front of his home crowd in France too.


In order to make it from top 64 to top 8, Kusanagi had to defeat TM|OilKing, KPF|KDL, and Broski, and he beat each of them in straight 2-0 sets.



For the final bracket, the Ryu main who switched over from Luke here in Season 2 took down Zangief Bolado and veteran VIT|Valmaster to reach grand finals from the winners side, which is something probably no one expected from such a stacked event aside from maybe those who’ve been training with the young man and seeing him level up.




His final challenge would be to take down the recent Esports World Cup champion KSG|Xiaohai, and Kusanagi would certainly be pushed to his limits.


With Xiaohai switching from M. Bison back to Cammy, fans got to witness an all out brawl between two masters trying to fight their way into Capcom Cup.


Even from the first round, they were off to the races with back and forth exchanges, but with just a sliver of life left, Kusanagi was able to hit confirm into his level 2 Super for the early lead.



This match would put Kusanagi’s playstyle with Ryu on full display from what we got to see throughout the major tournament he’d try to always keep the Shoto at the perfect poke spacing in order to secure an opening to secure big damage and / or advantage to try and keep the opponent on the backfoot and playing his game.


And turn on the aggression when the opportunity presented itself.


We’d also see throughout the event, however, that Kusanagi likes to go for resets and tricky setups with overheads, throws, Hashogeki and the like, which did admittedly work quite often… but Xaiohai’s reactions are still some of the best in the business.


If you give him any gap, the multi-game champion is almost always ready to capitalize.


These checks to Kusanagi’s game would allow Xiaohai to wrestle control over the pace back and allow him to reset the bracket in a close first set.



Xaiohai would take the quick lead, but Kusanagi fired back with two straight wins to reach tournament point with an impressive conversion.






Finally, the Ryu would push Cammy immediately to the corner and force Xiaohai’s hand in making him guess or try and react.


Kusanagi would hit 6, count them 6, throws in a row to take out almost all of Xiaohai’s life.








Cammy would ultimately counter the seventh attempt, but by that point it was too late and a wakeup Overdrive Shoryuken would end SF6 at UFA with a new champion as the crowd of his peers rushed the stage.


We’d seen players like Mouz|EndingWalker and Semy28 take World Warrior events with Ryu over the past year or so, but not a full on Premier like this with top talent from all over the world.


Although he got buffed quite a bit in Season 2, people may have been discounting Ryu a bit too much when comparing him to Ken and Akuma.


The latest official Street Fighter 6 rankings did have Ryu with the lowest win rate in Master rank (just below Akuma), but in the right hands, this Shoto certainly seems to have the sauce to succeed.


And starting as a young boy going to his first Street Fighter 4 tournaments over a decade ago, Kusanagi is now a man punching his ticket to Capcom Cup with that victory certainly tasting all the sweeter in front of his home crowd.





There’s certainly a party going down in his honor tonight.










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