UMA becomes instant millionaire as Street Fighter 6’s first world champion

From Taiwan with a flurry of furious feet, Wang “UMA” Yuan-hao exploded in the Capcom Cup X finals, taking Juri to the title, becoming Street Fighter 6’s first world champion and earning an instant $1 million for his troubles. 

Coming from the World Warrior Circuit, UMA entered Capcom Cup X as one of several players with little notoriety on a global stage, having almost exclusively competed in online tournaments like the InterContinental Fight Club since the launch of SF6. That did not stop him from putting on a dominant show, winning his initial group-stage matchups and clearing out the competition in the finals. 

The big theme for Capcom Cup’s playoffs this year was upsets, as many big names like NuckleDu and reigning Capcom Cup champion MenaRD went out in the first round—not even counting the number of heavy hitters that didn’t cut the top 16. Of the previous Capcom Cup champs, gachikun made the deepest run, bowing out in third place after a close 2-3 loss to Chris Wong after UMA knocked down the Hong Kong player in the winners’ finals. 

During his run, UMA dropped just one playoff set, that being to Chris Wong in the grand finals as the final Luke player standing took a strong 3-0 win to reset the bracket and put himself on even footing again. All before UMA turned it back around and swept Chris in return to take the title—though every game

For winning, UMA claimed the grand prize of $1 million, with the commentators proclaiming him the “first FGC millionaire” on broadcast as he lifted a giant check to the skies. He won the event as one of only four Juri players competing in a field dominated by Luke, Ken, and Dee Jay, who saw nine, eight, and six players using them, respectively, out of the initial 48 fighters in the main event. Anyone who voted for him to win in a recent SF6 event will also get an exclusive Juri outfit color.

As a whole, Capcom Cup X was initially criticized for its mix of online and offline qualifiers structure that saw many familiar faces left to the wayside and relegated to competing in the Last Chance Qualifier, along with some odd group seeding. Now that the event is wrapped, however, consensus on the event feels very positive because we saw two straight weekends of SF6 played at the highest level.  

To capitalize on that hype, Capcom has confirmed that Capcom Cup IX will also feature a grand prize of $1 million. The prize distribution will be closer to that of previous events in the series, though, which means second place and below will likely see a substantially smaller payout than this year.