No American has won the main SF game at its current Evo tournament
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Ah that would be why I don't remember it/couldn't find it, a lot of side tournies at Evo and a lot of them are not well tracked"Yes, Smug has indeed won at Evo! He secured victory in the Evo side tournaments in 20181. Additionally, Smug has an impressive track record, including top 8 placements at NCR 2019 and wins at NEC and Defend the North. His accolades speak volumes, and we can look forward to more impressive performances from this talented player!
If you’d like to explore more about Smug’s achievements, you can find additional details on his Liquipedia profile and DashFight player page23.
This what I got from Bing A.I. I, of course can't verify it but it's of interest.
liquipedia.net
Early Evo's you didnt really have many(any?) Japanese players coming across so they were all US winners, since 2003 when Evo started to become really big there have been a few though winning Super Turbo in the 00's but Justin Wong also won 3rd Strike in 2009 in the teams event with Issei(the losing finalist this time).
Realistically I think the very highest level of 3trd strike has always been Japanese comps, Evo Japan this year was a higher standard than Evo was although I think less entertaining towards the end as you didnt have anything like Hayao's run, very Yun(for some reasons there never seem to be any great US Yun players) dominated.
I thought it was 22 years? Last one was 2002
Quite hard to judge that in the early 00's though, 3rd Strike would have been considered the "mainline" game between 99 and 08 yet it wasnt played at Evo in 01 or 02 and then you had both 3rd Strike and Super Turbo played another every year between 03 and 08.
I've always seen the 20+ years referred to in this discussion and never seen the Jwong 2v2 win considered a mainline SF Evo win
I think an issue though is during the "arcade" era Capcom didnt tend to view each SF game as replacing the other the way we see in the modern era. The versions of a game like SF2, SF2 champion, SF2 Turbo, Super, Super Turbo yes they'd replace each other but SF2, Alpha and SF3 I don't think were viewed as direct replacements.
Well this isn't about how Capcom viewed them but how Evo viewed them. Evo would always have a main headlining tournament so even when there were multiple SF tournaments, one was featured as the 'Main Event'.
I can somewhat see what your saying that he's really known for all those Online Edition youtube vids were he's just doing ultra aggressive rush down every time but rewatching some of evo 3rd stike actually I think he's improved quite a bit more recently, now able to play a much smarter more varied game whilst still having the kara demon ability beat Bubbles and took Hayao to a very close match.
