There are only two Japanese Evo so far, but the event has become a famous stop for many fighting game competition and community. It has been attracting many talents from across the globe for quite a while now. The competition of Tekken 7 happened last week was of a no different also, in this case, the talent that won the championship doesn't come from that powerhouse in Japan or South Korea. The champion this time is a player from Pakistan, who performed an excellent skill which made him now all well-known in the world of Tekken 7.

Evo Japan is the only of its kind. The brand and name of this event still have the legacy of the best tournament in the competition of video game, but now the event doesn't attract the same number of players as Evolution Championship Series in Las Vegas. But Evo Japan thanks to it location in Japan has a high caliber, it attracts more a diver pool of players. All of that turns out to a small but packed with talent for games such as Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2, Street Fighter V and  Tekken 7.

Going to Evo Japan

Arslan Ash, a 23-year-old player comes from Pakistan is one of those talents. As a Tekken 7 competitor he had gone on a very hard trip to come to Evo Japan, according to Arslan the process of receiving a visa is quite hard for him because he is a Pakistani citizen. Once he got the visa then he traveled from Lahore, Pakistan to Tokyo and then Fukuoka, in total the trip took five flights and two and a half days. After many setbacks and delays, Arslan finally made it to Fukuoka then headed straight to the venue of Evo Japan just one hour before the start of Tekken 7 competition.
Then after 48 hours of flight non-rest, Arslan quickly went through the first portion of the competition bracket. He defeated straight three opponents before came to face with the Jae-min “Knee” Bae the Tekken god of South Korea. Arslan defeated Knee easily, who has been one of the main seeds of this tournament and went to the losers bracket after the round of competition with Arslan. After the game Knee tweeted on Twitter that he is considering going to Pakistan to learn Tekken from Arslan and his local community. After that Arslan suffered his first loss in the tournament to another Korean, BoALuvb. But unlucky for us, all these matches of Arlan were not on stream.

From the first broadcast
The first broadcast of Arslan is two rounds after his first defeat, this time he fought against Sun-wrong “LowHigh” Youn, a promising player. Comparing between the two, LowHigh has far more experience in this tournament than Arslan. However, with his confidence and skills, Arslan counted all that LowHigh threw at him and then counter-attack and won.

Going to the finals, Arslan demolished continuously many players in front of him. On his way, he defeated Nopparut “BooK” Hempamorn a Thai player, coming from the US Jimmy Tran, Yuta Take of Japan. Then Arslan coming to the match with Jae-Hyun “CherryBerryMango” Kim the last hope of South Korea. Like always, the match started with Arslan going strong winning the first two games thank his amazing skills. He kept on using Kazumi normal competent and summoning of the long-range tiger to pressure CherryBerryMango and played it safe. For the rest of the tournament, Arslan controlled totally the match and forced CherryBerryMango played at his speed. Then apparently, Arslan defeated CherryBerryMango with a perfect score match, continued his way to the final.

The final match

Arslan's opponent in the championship is Alexander “AK” Laverez, a young player from Filipino. AK made it famous back in 2013 when just 13 years old he became one of the best players of Tekken. It was white shocking to see that the final match would play out by two players from the Philippines and Pakistan not feature at least a name from South Korea, the US or Japan.

The final match was a collision of the polar opposite: AK and his offensive mixups vs Arslan's impeccable defense. Thanks to his perfect record in Evo Japan, in this match AK only had to win one of best-of-five compare to Arslan who would need to win two. But the Pakistani player is very resilient, he kept on stepping out of the range and punishing whiffed attack to AK. AK used Shaheen's setup to pressure Arslan but then Arslan enforced his will to slow down the match then put AK to the wall of defense. After two sets of game, AK won only one game, Arslan secured a 6-1 victory and became Evo Japan new champion.