I don't think it's a feature of fighting games, it's more like daigo is a genetic freak who dedicated his life to being the best. fighting games require an insane level of mechanics in terms of speed and precision AND good reaction times, both of which degrade heavily with age.
@@karayi7239 Honestly, I don't think things are as reaction times based as you think. I believe things are more about life taking people away from people's time in games the most and maybe certain neuroplascitity to learn as a smaller cause. I don't think until about 40, you need to be concerned about reaction times, but a lot of people think now that you turn 25 and can't compete in esports. That's not true and isn't true in any sports.
@@Mykulveli While it is true that reaction times peak at 24, I don't think the difference is game changing as I made it sound. I actually take back that daigo is a genetic freak because it takes away from the amount of hard work and dedication he put in. It's shocking how he didn't get a career ending wrist injury cuz this is a HUGE reason why pros retire.
@@karayi7239 Yeah I wasn't necessarily calling out you because I can't glean all your views from your short post but I think there is that sentiment in the broad gaming community. Daigo is definitely something else, no doubt.
@@karayi7239 u definitely need reactions but these oldheads have built muscle memory of move animations for decades. they have in depth game matchup knowledge and can still compete at the highest level which isnt something you could say in MOBAs or FPS games. Same thing with a legacy fighter like Tekken, some of the best players are approaching 40 and can still wipe the floor with up and coming players
I definitely agree. It's too easy to make up narratives and opinions because it's almost impossible to do proper research in the FGC. The CPT records from SFV and SFIV have been erased from the Capcom website because SF6 just came out
I think with the last part and how Tokido being more quiet compared to Punk, is really more of a difference in language. I think for me Tokido once said that if a Street Fighter Alien came down and only one person could be chosen to fight he wanted to be that guy and that has sat with me more than anything Punk has ever done but that message was from a Japanese tweet from 7 years ago. But like you said it’s really preference but I do think a language barrier does contribute to Tokido or any foreign player (with the exception of Daigo) not being talked about as much as Punk was
I agree with the language barrier. It's also about what we see as westerners. We don't see the results as easily of Tokido mentoring players or how he influences his local scene. I'm positive he does but I just can't know. But there is that thing that Punk says himself "they see us win too much it's normal". Tokido kinda suffers from that ironically enough lol. Him getting st at a major is cool but the fact that he'd get 2nd at like everything else somehow goes under our Radar
And the guy completely ignored tokidos most emotional moments after losses and wins with his two FT10s against daigo. Or they were FT15s... Anyway, legendary moments.
I stan tokido but it's so true that punk inspires people. I've genuinely thought before "damn i wish i had those footsies" and also about some of his quotes so often.
outside of statistical results, Tokido had that, "DAMN I JUST BEAT HIM" factor and Punk had that edge that we all were jealous of xD These are reasons why their GOATS, when their status proceeds them in the game they played.
Punk is da Magneto of da FGC, He is quite literally a genius of fighting games, similar to Kizzie kay and Justin Wong, And the Mr.Fantasic of all fighting games he lays his hands on SonicFox, Then we got quite literally the Spiderman of da FGC aka SMUG. My SF5 CFN is SmugDaigoHamza on ps4 and my Guilty gear strive is PunkSmugHamza on ps4. My SF6 is Allahu-Akbar on Ps5. I got to platinum quite quickly, I kept think I was the Gold rank because I wasnt paying attention. Then I was thinking why am I fighting Platinum rank dudes when I am only silver rank? Like an idiot I kept looking at their rank and not my own. I got my ass handed to me by some players in ranked and got smack into Gold rank. Then got dawg walked a whole bunch in casuals 11 times by a God dang kimberly player then dawg walked by a Manon players. Then I jumped on ranked again lost so more then I called it a day. Sometimes it's best to take time out of ranked in casual matches and just lab and chill da fuck out in world tour mode. Because going on a losing streak in ranked really can hurt. Sft I give 10/10 overall but still prefer Sf5 gameplay.
@@MuhammadAli-xw4yc You know nothing about the fgc. Punk gets washed in many finals, he def struggles against tokido and many top players such as M.crimson and pros from japan. Not to mention he can never beat infiltration. Punk is highly overrated. Infiltration, Higuichi, Tokido, Mcrimson and many others wash him easy.
@@kelvin303 You sound emotional my dude. They all wash each other. I have watched tons of their livestreams, in their battle lounges, Also you arrogant punk, I watched Mr.Crimson cook up Idom,punk,that world class zeku player dude from britain at dat tournment in europe. But a few days later Punk cooked Mr.Crimson for free in long ass set. I have fought in offline tournments in arcades in 1992 in Nagoya, roppongi and all over tokyo. Dude don't be so arrogant. I have been involved in fight game community since Street fighter 1. Young bucks nowadays huh.
I agree with pretty much everything you put forward here. I'd love to see a video on the Greatest SF4 player too. It's an interesting one since there's no CLEAR choice imo. If I had to pick, I'd choose Daigo but Momochi and Infiltration have arguments to be made as well
In term of influence I would have said MenaRD. He litteraly help and sponsored the WHOLE Domican Rep region so that they could be put on the map. With new events like Game Over, or new players makin waves like Crossover and Caba. Doing that from scratch is more influential imo. I wonder what are y’all thought about it
I'm Dominican and I love this man so much. Even got a picture with him at a local tournament. It's amazing what he has done for fighting games in our country and he'll forever be number 1 in my heart.
I agree his influence is huge. I mostly didn't mention it because honestly, his invitational results alone weren't enough to carry him all the way to the level of punk and tokido. He was still way behind. Winning 2 capcom cups is insane, thought to be almost impossible even. But he just isn't consistent at any other events when it comes to getting top 3. That's not to at his influence is less than the other guys', it just didn't fit in the message of this video
@@qmanchu ooh I understand now it is true that while he was consistent it wasn't on the same level as Punk and Murder Face. But I think that it should have been mentionned noneless because it cause an "injustice" on his side in the video, like he did nothing even tho we all know how much he did for the fgc. To the point Fuudo was playing Birdie too. But It doesn't invalidate your point in your video in the grand scheme of thing your analisys still make sense and watching it was cool for me
@Celrok production yeah I should've been more clear and established that I was moving on from Mena at that point. He's an immensely impactful player. He's built up so much in just a few years. I meant him no disrespect and if I felt the video wasn't already too long, I'd have said more about him. Maybe in the future of SF6
Yeah that was the interesting thing about really looking back. Tokido is clearly the most dominant player BUT Punk took off basically a whole year if not more. Really makes you wonder where he'd have ended up if he kept that competitive drive
If Infiltration never got cancelled in 2018 history would be completely different and a lot of dudes would be getting second place in that alternate universe.
@@qmanchu He's made great strides to improve himself and he's even losing some money keeping the lights on at a Korean local he runs. But I hear people are showing up to support it. I would like to see him back too, but you know how people are these days. It's usually a particular crowd, who knows.
I dunno... I think the argument made against Tokido's influence was a little flawed. The video even presented his most famous "Fighting Games are something, sooo.... Great". I remember watching that and it resonated with me in a way more profound and moving than anything else in the FGC tbh. Its the reason i went to EVO the next year, and reignited my love of the beautiful grind😊
The big thing about influence that we can actually measure is how the game changed in response to a certain player. Punk was a driving force for everyone to change their playstyles where Tokido didn't have that much influence over how the game was actually played. The other way we can measure it is by the players each directly influenced and the results of those players. Punk has directly led to the qualifications of at least 3 players to Capcom Cup whereas Tokido's students aren't as prevalent. Now that could be because of how the Japanese scene is open for everyone to learn from everyone and is possibly flawed. That's why I leaned into the first thing about how Punk changed the way the whole world played. That's really the whole argument of why Punk would outdo Tokido there. I would've said more directly about Tokido but the video was already so long
Great video dude, it just shows how much the community loves the game since there are so many great players it's nearly impossible to determine who's the best, cause they all are!
I think the one thing you missed about hte influence metric is SO MANY of the best runs that we saw, fujimura probably having the scariest peak, punk insane year, infiltration the main metric htat finally settled them as the TOP SHIT was that they wehre able to pass tokido. He was the benchmark not for being good not for being great but for being the best and that influence passes all language barriers nad is crazy
Ayyy I'm glad! It was a blast from the past to look at all this old footage. SF5 was my first "spectator fighting game" so it was really fun to get into all the details
Amazing video ! I like that you try to be the most objective possible. One for sf4 would be great too . Thank for the good work. Ps: sorry for my English . I speak french.
Great stuff as usual! Arguably the quality of competition was weaker earlier on. I mean the best folks were still winning of course, but I don't know if we should discount folks who peaked late (like iDom) the same as folks who peaked early (like Voldemort).
That being said, just checking out @FGCombo it looks like iDom v. Punk is even, slightly favoring Punk, so hard to make a strong case there, and Punk absolutely did change the game.
Only reason I discounted players like Idom who peaked late is because there's just not as much to go off of. To me, I wanted to see who held the game down in aspects of consistency, longevity, and scale. You can have consistency and scale, but without longevity, it's just hard for me to call them the GOAT. I wasn't sure how to go about that objectively. Especially since players like Kawano became world class during the pandemic lol. The life of SFV is a weird one the more you look back at it
@@qmanchu definitrly thr most consistent, Punk certainly made more of an impact atleast in North America, had me standing in my room screaming at the TV more than once
It doesn't really help that just like Infiltration before him, Tokido fell off in the twilight years of the game. Sure he still can place very well and consistently in tournaments but he wasn't the unstoppable force he was in 2017 or 2018. And even then he never managed to clinch Capcom Cup during either of those years. Tokido will forever rank in the upper echelons of any fighting game he takes seriously and commits to full time. That's just the POWER of the Japanese scene that drives and shapes players like Tokido to be at their best to compete. But if I had to take all 3 of the top players (Punk, MenaRD and Tokido) in to account factoring in tourney results, consistency over the entire stretch of the game is something you would def have to take into account. Punk in 2017, no one could touch this guy it seemed. Everyone was terrified of running into him in tournament in NA. It wasn't until Tokido showed up and showed that he can bleed, that Punk's awe and wonder surrounding him dispersed. But even then he remained a threat, having an off year in 2018 but coming back with avengeance in 2019, and remaining a solid credible threat up till the end of the game, the only other NA player being able to best him in Tourney being Idom. Likewise MenaRD walked a similar path, and what's even more astounding, did so from a SMALLER almost nonexistent scene. Mena had said it on multiple accounts that the DR scene struggled to compete. They didnt have the ability to gather and train and deepen their understanding of the game as quickly or as easily as bigger scenes like Europe, Japan, or the US. They had to put in the grind and work 2x as hard. That's why when Mena won CC in 2017 he used a sizeable portion of his winnings to set up a facility where local players from his scene could gather and train and share tech on fighting games in general. He took a bit of a dip there afterwards but always managed to stay in the limelight when showcasing top players and came back with avengance in 2022 to win the game for a 2nd time against the worlds best at CC. Coupling these two factors together (the small scene and his ability to consistently place high at tournies or even win the biggest of them all) is why I personally rank Mena as the top player in the game. He has the invitationals and tourney results to back up this claim. Only his influence suffers, but as we discussed, his "influence" was always kneecapped from the start, as DR never had the ability to get its name out their as a competitive region. I hope with more wins from people like Mena we can see that country come to rank among the worlds best, not too dissimilar from what we are seeing with Pakistan and Tekken right now.
Something that clearly needs to be mentioned about punk.. his character was nerfed over and over and over again even though he was the only person really winning with her consistently matchup to matchup at the highest levels. This had a lot to do with his “fall” during 2018. Idom didn’t get great till he switched to poison who is a rigged ass character. Man probabky overall deserves the most respect playing that level that he did, coming from where he came from.
@@dimex3362 I think this is a misconception about Idom. When he won that capcom cup, he only used Poison for grand finals against Punk. Every other set was with Laura. We all remember it being Poison who took it because she was there those final rounds, but Idom was mostly there because of Laura
@@qmanchu idom literally switched to poison and won capcom cup.. let that sink in. Laura beat all the bums but never did well against punk. Idom couldn’t outskill punk so he counter picked him and in so doing, found a character that beats most of the cast. But make no mistake, the capcom cup win and all his proceeding results are due to poison. When the going got tough with Laura, poison was always the next pick. And there’s nothing wrong with that.. but it is worth mentioning that’s the only reason he ever beat punk.
@@dimex3362bro didn’t you watch the Evo less than a year ago when he did the craziest losers round with Laura only? He elevated a character that was seen as flawed by a mass of the scene. He went to 3 real tournaments in 2018 and did top 6 for each of them.. what Idom did is that he elevated a character in ways that were unparalleled. Was Punk an insane Karin? Yes, but so was Bonchan and later Killzyou, was Tokido a crazy Akuma/Luke/Urien? Yes, but also NL and Takamura and Samurai and Nemo. There was no Laura and to be honest, there never was another Laura who I could see taking more than 2 games off Idom in an FT10, and for me that makes him belong in this convo. He uses poison for 3 matches and now he won the whole tourney with her zzz
@@javoclean960 when he couldn’t hack it with Laura he alsways switched to poison… punk also created Karin. Bingham and phenom were both carbon copies of his karin.. and neither had punks success because they couldn’t hack all the matchups that punk could, with her.
That's not what the "eye test" is. The "eye test" in sports is whether someone who has a good eye for good players can tell whether the player is good. Whether Tokido is influential or not isn't related to the "eye test".
I really disagree with Punk being the most influentional, Punk has a lot of haters who joke about him choking on the big stage, dumb opinion of course, punk is obviously one of the best, but Tokido is respected by everyone, the guy was considered a top 10 player in every year of the game. While it can look like he was not that good at the covid era, even that is false when you see his results at Topanga and SFL JP. Tokido also have the best storyline and the best moments, his FT10 with daigo is famous as hell, the story of the fighting game god who always got 2nd place deciding to focus everything on 1 game and becoming the best for his hard work, people respect tokido as the guy who became the best by pure discipline, you have the memes, like the guy using a fucking scale mid tournament. Also, "Fighting Games are something so great", honestly its just impossible to best that. Tokido is the GOAT of SFV and its not even close.
@@kelvin303 one year of extreme dominance is not equal to being in the conversation of the best in the game in every year. I get that its very possible that infiltration would have done as well as tokido over the years if he wasnt banned, but that is just an assumption and dont hold weight over real results
@@leonardopolizelmartins5794 That’s the problem you and many aren’t understanding, he beat Tokido way more times, it’s clear as day that Infiltration is a better player than him while using weak characters such as Juri and ED.
@@leonardopolizelmartins5794 Not to mention he dominated from 2016 -2018 not just one year my friend. Even after ben banned he was still performing at such a high level… factz are the factz. He’s definitely the goat for SFV.
The biggest reason I say influence tilts in Punk's favor is because of how the game transformed cuz of him. Legitimately, dealing with language barriers and biases, that's probably the only measurable metric for influence aside from the players these guys mentor winning tournaments. It's not 100% clear how the mentoring works in Japan since it's a tighter community and everyone seems to have access to everyone. So that's why I give the edge to Punk. But that isn't to say in other factors, it's not close. It's very close
That was the goal. Just to be realistic and as objective as possible. Going into it, I didn't actually perceive Tokido as THAT strong over time. I knew he had his movements but no, he's always been a menace. Glad you enjoyed
@@qmanchu How didnt you notice? Two back to back evo finals, capcom cup final, Eleague champion, first or second in almost all topanga leagues. And now in your video you informed me that he was top 3 in all seasons of the capcom pro tour.
If we only consider results nobody would come close, but I think that at their peak Punk is more virtually invincible. I'm a tokido fan and I know that he has bad matchups like Gachikun' Rashid or Kichpa's Gief, unlike Punk that sometimes seems to have no gap to beat him. Thats why i think any of both can be the goat
@saraiva luis das neves at the time I noticed, obviously. But after like 3 years of no offline competition, recency bias got in the way. The specifics escaped me was all. I also wasn't into SFV competitions until around 2017 when Punk was already on the scene. I entered the fighting game genre via competitive smash haha
To me it’s tokido he’s just my favourite and I’m biased as fuck Cus watching him got me into the fgc. The murder face is king and the quote “ fighting game is something … so great “ lives rent free in my head
I started watching street fighter because of Punk. I don't even play the game or fighting games in general. I learned about Mena Rd and Tokido AFTER Punk opened the gateway for me.
@@qmanchu i know you’ve covered all angles in analyzing this topic, do you think this head to head record is significant. I certainly think so. Thanks for the content.🙏🏽
@liluziBurt667 in general, yeah head to head is important. But it's not feasible to use for this context. I chose the metrics I did because they're easy to measure and also compare year to year. If I did head 2 head, I'd have to break it all down by year because some years one player dominated the other. Generally, it'd be too much work but it also would become murky and confusing quickly
Daigo is probably the greatest Street Fighter player of all time. He's been at the top of almost every game competitively, even as he grows older and the games grow more popular. He's a legend without a doubt but not a Top 5 SFV player. Maybe top 10 at best but I'd have to do a lot of research there to be sure
@@qmanchu Daigo was probably top 15 in SFV. He didn't gel with SFV like Tokido gelled with SFV. The switch up was instantaneous that you couldn't blame age. Daigo was arguably top 1-3 at end of SF4, and immediately switched to outside of top 15. On the other hand, Tokido was probably top 25-30 in SF4 or even top 15 and immediately gelled with SFV to where he was top 2. New games switch up rankings for a lot of players. Hence why I have a lot of respect for players who have been a top player for so many SF games, where they have to abandon their top in the game status, and re earn it. We'll see how SF6 switches things up. Daigo at the very least already looks more comfortable beating top pros than the early part of SFV.
The 18 minute mark definetly reminded me of the Armada vs Mang0 Melee GOAT argument which I find is funny that another game boils down to the same set of factors
Yeah, in my opinion it's Armada hands down BUT Mango still playing to this day at top level is so staggeringly impressive that him being the GOAT makes sense too
Check out my "Modern Tier Lists Don't Matter" and "Are you carried in ggst" videos. They're older videos on this channel but probably close to what you're looking for
What i ask you is, if you qualifie to capcom and prepare yourself to play Who you would study to face? I think the answer for many Will be Tokido, Punk and other that did well in capcom pro tour, that was why players like Mena, Idom or even Gachikun has more chance to win capcom cup.
Punk definately has the most experience overall, able to play just about any character pretty well. Tokido prob has the biggest Resume when it comes to tournaments. And MenaRD in the 2023 Season prob had the most playtime for that one year than anyone else, no one even came close for Capcom Cup. His matchup knowledge is unparalleled to anyone atm
I'd actually say Tokido's mastery of matchups is the unparalleled one. Just to understand what I mean, watch his performance at Topanga a few weeks ago. He didn't lose a single set and won with creative responses to every matchup. Everyone, including Mena, was at a loss
When you were playing the 3rd Strike Character theme during the "Invitationals" portion of the video, what version/remix was that? It didn't sound like the original OST. Seemed like it was remastered.
Daigo is the GOAT when it comes to influence. Haven't you notice how these FGC streamers like Jwong. Nephew. and even Punk himself has Daigo's name in their uploaded videos on their YT channel just to gain more views. How many "Daigo parrys" has Jwong uploaded. Don't believe me? go check for yourself. Even in tournament streams. Fans always ask if Daigo is partcipating in the said events. Having said all of that, Tokido is the GOAT of SFV. He was the most dominant. You can't judge it by influence because Daigo beats all of them easily. In addition to all of that. You even have Daigo's face for your thumbnail and you only mentioned daigo's name in the video once. I wonder why is that.
I'd agree with you if Mena had won anything else. I can agree he's been the strongest SFV player in the world on those given nights, but he's also failed to qualify for Capcom Cup, not won any other major CPT tournament, and has a losing record against Punk/Tokido. Objectively, capcom cup was weighted over everything else in the video, and he still falls short because that's kind of all he has
U HIT THE NAIL with Influence. That's why in NBA we talk about Michael Jordan and Kobe, but we don't talk as much about Tim Duncan that has the same number of rings as Kobe or Bill RUssel that as more rings than anybody will ever have. Or wilt Chamberlain with soo many records we KNOW it's impossible to beat. But it doesn't matter, Influence plays a BIG part and that's something Michael Jordan has and Wilt no matter how many record or Bills rings will ever have. Michael Jordan has a global influence in the sport known as basketball, and only players later touched near that level. Kobe, LeBron. Tim Duncan might be just as great as Kobe, but he doesn't have the influence.
I think Punk had an infiltration in 2012 aura around him. There was a moment where it felt like he couldn’t lose, making many international players sweat.
He had a legal dispute with his wife at the time of domestic abuse. The case was made public and he was let go from his team and CPT banned him. Then when things looked like he could've been let back in, he was found to be involved with rigging tournaments. And then after all that he went on stream and said a lot of racially charged things for some reason. So it just seemed like there was a mountain of issues and bad PR
@qoharjamalhaqy526 it's switching hands pretty quickly but at the moment it's between Punk and Big Bird. EWC is the next big event and if either of them win that, I'd definitely say that person is the best
@@qmanchu Whoa not even a MenaRD mention. Interesting. I think since right after capcom cup x the seasonal ranking should reset and start and since then, punk has done more and is more consistent than Mena. Ever since Capcom Cup x: Punk: CEO, WCG Games, EVO + consistency and dominance Mena: Redbull Kumite and evo japan (which is not the same as EVO and not as significant) Big Bird: Dreamhack + consistency and dominance
@qoharjamalhaqy526 my issue with placing Mena is that he can be the best in the world on certain days. But it's very often he fails to even get top 16 in super majors. BUT he's made huge strides from the end of SFV to now. He was probably my pick for best in the world last year. Either him or Chris Wong
Oh hell yeah, his Akuma reign of terror was insane! I would've said more about that but the video was already so long, didn't really fit. Tokido's influence over people switching to that character is probably unrivaled except for the uptick of people playing Poison after Idom maybe. But even then, Tokido is still prolly more so
Man I understand the answer but I still consider Mena the GOAT He is becoming an icon of the Dominican Republic to the point even people that have never touched a controller know about Mena
Influence was a part that I was a tad afraid to talk about. I know Tokido has had a MASSIVE influence over the jp FGC that I as an American will never understand, and I'm sure Mena is the same with LATAM. Tokido and Mena both have invested heavily in their communities as well but at the end of the day, I just think Punk overall dictated how we played the game thru its life. Calling Mena the GOAT is totally respectable too though
@@qmanchu yea I agree punk has done more but I’m just EXTREMELY biased towards Mena since he has even appeared in national newspapers here in the Dominican Republic
@Juan not only that but winning 2 capcom cups and being from the DR is legitimately insane. I know the DR is strong, we've seen it. But it's not a very big/populous region nor does it get the same esports opportunities as USA or JP. So if anything, he had a handicap of sorts compared to those 2 and STILL manages to be in the discussion
@@diegoval2010 Your freaking name is Juan. And you're talking about a Dominican player. Of course your bias will cloud your judgement which makes no sense to even reason with you. Statistical data, facts, influence, etc. doesnt matter because your mind was already made up once you pressed play. Regional/local influence is cool. But in the world of SFV or the FGC, no one wanted to be like MenaRD. Ppl wanted to be like Punk bro. And I don't even really like him.
I think the issue is after the initial scandal, 2 or 3 more scandals popped up and it doesn't look like any brand wants to be associated with that right now. He's been in online CPT events tho so I guess that ban is up. But it's up to offline tourneys to let him back individually
Lol that's totally fine! But you realize that's just to account for things we can't account for in the last years. Plus as a send off to SFV, it's important to bring attention to the fact that the game wouldn't be played the way it was if not for Punk. My GOAT is still Tokido, but I can't really discredit people who say Punk
Great video. I didnt think punk was that strong, he kinda gave me vibes of "we have sonicfox at home" but damn, to be the only one to come close to the bloodthirsty monster that tokido is... I'll admit, at the end of the video I was about to write a cringe angry comment like: "how can you say punk is better than tokido because he is louder, you know nothing about sf5 you scrub REEEE". But then I saw your other comments explaining better and held myself. Please let me apologize with this like button.
In SFV, it's Tokido... Daigo, Tokido and Infiltration have the most Tier 1 tournament wins in Street Fighter, as well as runner-ups. They also have the most Tier 2 wins. If you compare MenaRD resume, it's paper thin. It's not even remotely close to Tokido. Tokido has 16 Tier 1 wins in just SFV alone. MenaRD has 4 in his ENTIRE career including all other fighting games.
for my money, daigo is always going to be the fighting game god. However, that's bias from me growing up watching daigo. Tokido and punk likely have more influence these days. In the case of street fighter V I feel like tokido is way better in every regard though punk is a close runnerup.
Daigo is the GOAT of Street Fighter in general in my opinion. I wanna do research to see if that's objectively true but I think it is. I don't think many if any come close
Great video besides the "influence" part. It just shows a big USA bias on your side and the fact that it's the final section of the video just seems like a cop out to put your fav in, kinda left an bad taste in my mouth in an otherwise nice video.
I feel like people are interpreting that the influence part means Punk won over Tokido in this video lol. It's literally just there as an extra point to look at. There's no preference to Punk here. It's just important, as a goodbye to SFV, to talk about how Punk was able to change the way the WORLD plays the game. That's all lol. I say myself that my pick is Tokido here but saying Punk wouldn't be crazy in my eyes is all
I know you said certainly not Punk but I'm curious as to why. Punk has played more characters in tournament than Mena has, so he's got him down on range
By individual achievements, I think it has to be Tokido because of his results throughout the lifespan of SFV while being in the strongest region but if we're equating greatness to who influenced and changed how SFV was played, it's Punk. How he played the game right from his arrival was so different than what everyone else was doing that it straight up feels that he's playing a different game altogether. He presented a completely different blueprint on how SFV should be played and opened the eyes of many on what was actually possible that the Japanese FGC had massive gatherings dedicated to replicating and trying to figure out his style. If you compare how SFV was played at the highest level before and after Punk made it big, it's like night and day.
Lol daigo hold my beer.... daigo had thousands of trophy that's why even Tokido and God's respect him... He got guilty gear champions sf 2 3 4 and alpha vampire savior/dark stalkers trophies
Exactly. And I don’t think the Japanese did that for any other player. They called punk the best in the world.. I don’t think they did that for anyone. Even Nemo came out and challenged punk to a ft10 cause in Nemos words “punk is easily the best player in the world”
The only problem I have with your influence argument is that all the people in sports you've compared them to, had the metrics to back up their influence. Not to mention what you said was Punk's greatest strength in influence is something that all Japanese players do. They are the strongest region because of how they uplift and make each other stronger. I think it's easy to say Punk was the most vocal... but if I had to choose who was a better role model? Punk acts like his name... Tokido acts with respect.
Role model sure and I'm not saying Punk has influence cuz he's vocal. He's influential because the whole world changed their play styles to be more like his and he's directly gotten several people into capcom cup. That's pretty much it. And I agree that Japan's greatest strength is that but that's a bigger community effort that's harder to pin down to one person. Directly tying Punk to many capcom cup qualifications is pretty big. That's all.
Tokido with Akuma was peak of SFV. But sadly Capcom just can't stop nerf Akuma and he pretty much struggle to keep up. Menat was OD at that time and his Akuma trashed so bad and it was so disheartening. He forced to change main. His Urien and Luke never as good. Tokido just Akuma and Akuma is him period.
The "Influence" section is completely irrelevant to the topic. We're looking for the greatest SFV player of all time, not the greatest SFV influencer of all time. Only results matter, and Punk has not had the results lately to be in the conversation.
i agree that the "influence" section is wack but instead should be considered an "overall skills" section. like how good are the players in game, how dominante are their wins, do they win from losers or winners more often, things like that. if you were to consider raw ability, i believe it's punk>idom>tokido>mena. but also for an overall career evaluation, you can't pretend like their past successes don't matter as much just because they aren't performing that well currently
I do think the influence part, is HEAVLY biased towards the west. If you ask people in Japan and maybe even just nearby Asian countries, they would pick Daigo or Tokido most likely and their influence in Japan and maybe even the Asian SF5 scene in general, is much greater than any of the western players. As a western person who has lived in Asia, and now lives in South Korea, I know that sometimes, even the most famous people in our eyes, are not well known in Japan or Korea and these countries also have a LOT of pride in their players as well in every sport. The fact that Tokido and even Daigo, are being talked about as the GOAT of SF5 by us westerners, shows how much influence they actually have and how good they are. Especially since they can’t even really communicate with us the same way someone like Punk, who is a native english speaker, can either, as they mostly speak in Japanese as can be seen from their social media for example. I recommend watching some of Tokidos videos, then you can see how much influence he really has in Japan at least. So in the end, my pick would be Tokido, in terms of statistics he is the GOAT, and in term of influence, I do not think he falls behind Punk in anyway, especially if you look at Japan. Liked the video though. But do think the influence metric is a bit skewed, as it is heavily western biased. In the end though, they all gave us some good SF5 to watch.
The section is definitely biased but the only point I really want people to walk away from with this is how small Japan actually is lol. If Punk had this hold on the entire world AND Japan, where as Tokido could have a similar hold on Japan and less of the western world, the western world is so much bigger than a few small islands. And that's not to diminish what those players have done. The biggest thing is Punk changed the way the game was played across the globe, influencing even the likes of Tokido himself! It didn't really go the other way around. That's really all I meant by that section. I hope it's clear that even if I think Punk had more influence over the game itself, Tokido is in my opinion the undisputed greatest
@@qmanchu Yeah I see your point, still I personally think it’s hard to talk about influence because you can’t say Japan is small in a context like this. For example, despite being 1/3rd of the US population and only having roughly 21% of the US GDP, Japan still manages to be the 3rd largest video game market (only about $14B behind the US) and the 2nd largest music market behind the US. So size doesn’t really matter, especially in something like fighting games where the scene is so region specific (e.g Korea and Tekken, KoF and South America). Now add the fact that not all of Japan, Europe or America plays video games, and that the series itself is Japanese and existed a decade before in Japan before eventually coming to the US. So it has much more history in Japan, and the regional SF scene has a lot of support from Capcom and large companies, teams and the community. Even arcades, which are still popular in Japan, bought SF5 machines and now buy SF6 machines. So Japan might very well have the largest SF community. Of course, it’s hard to know for sure things like this, but don’t think the difference in reach or influence is that big, especially looking at metrics like followers, views and history. The regional scene in Japan is really impressive and stacked. Influence might even be in Tokidos favor for all we know. It’s really hard to say for a fact how much influence they’ve had, especially without any inside knowledge of the scene, especially in Japan. Unless they are a player like Knee or Faker for example. This is kind of a slippery slope, but I definitely think that Punk and Tokido are the two in contention for SF5, with my choice being Tokido as well. But I can definitely see why people would pick Punk, it’s well deserved too
@tigerchuu2148 yupp and I mostly agree but the biggest point I wanted to make was influence over the game, not influence over people since you can't rly measure that. The influence over the game that Punk yielded was people slowing the game down and looking for confirms. Everyone started doing that once he began winning. Tokido's biggest influence over the game was people switching to Akuma and still not achieving his results. So Punk's influence affecting the top players of Japan itself and the best players globally is mostly what I mean here. Tokido didn't have that, which is why I mentioned Japan being small was important. The other point I mention is we can directly trace 3 Capcom Cup qualifiers back to Punk and I admitted in the video that we can't know for sure about Tokido in this regard mostly cuz Japan's FGC is very different than ours. So I admit the bias there. But basically not only did Punk change the way the game was played, he also directly influenced the outcomes of multiple Capcom Cups via people he trained or sponsored. That's heavy influence over the game, not people. If that makes sense? Me saying "Nobody wants to play like Tokido" was definitely an inflammatory thing to put in that I regret cuz it takes away from my main point haha
I feel like your methodology substantially de-emphasized the COVID era of SFV, which as a result massively downplayed iDom and oversold Tokido. I would argue iDom was a top 5 player for about as long as Tokido was in terms of time, but because it overlapped with a period of time when CPT wasn’t happening it seems liken he only had 2 good years when in reality he had 4. Tokido on the other hand, his results completely cratered the second he switched off Akuma. (Not saying that’s the reason why, just giving a timeframe) Not only did he not win many tournaments during this period, but he often didn’t even make top 8. If Tokido had maintained his dominance that he had from 2016-2019 into the rest of the game, then unquestionably he would have been the top player. But I feel like your data didn’t really acknowledge the slump that Tokido had near the end of SFV, and while Punk might not have been as dominant at any point as Tokido, he was a top player for more of the game’s lifespan.
There's almost no way to account for the covid era that makes sense. You can't even call Tokido's time in that era a slump. He destroyed people in Topanga and Japan's CPT qualifiers were the hardest in the world. So saying he took a dive after switching off Akuma isn't really true. And if you wanna make the argument that I am downplaying Idom (which is entirely possible) you've got to find some way to somehow back it up. Idom also barely qualified for Capcom Cup this year, you gotta remember. He needed to resort to the World Warrior in which he faced a Japanese player lol. Comparing Japan to other regions doesn't really work unfortunately
Your entire write up undersells tokido and basically did what you accused the creator of doing but toward Idom and punk instead lol. Tokido did not "slump" after Akuma. The man won the intel world open FFS and several other local tournaments during the COVID era while locked in the most competitive area of the game (Japan) You sir Have a bias
It would be good to go back to the original 5 and see how they stacked up against one another directly in competition. Meaning how many times is punk lose to mena tokido infiltration etc.. what are all their records against each other… if they’ve played. I saw punk play against infiltration in only one tournie and punk got destroyed (I thought he would tbh) that doesn’t mean I think until is better than punk.. but infiltrations style is something you have to get used to, in sf5.
@Dime X yeah and when they played it was ages ago, also at a local tournament before a major so it's hard to say how it would go down when Punk was in his prime and such. I though about including a section like this but honestly, it's not really what the video was about. The nitty gritty of players vs players tells a muddled story that would need a whole lot of extra unpacking. Sticking to general tournament results paints a clearer picture. Not to say head to head results aren't interesting, it's just hard to include Infiltration in that specifically cuz his prime was before Idom and Punk had their primes
@@qmanchu oh ye, I’m not saying for this video. I thought your video was right on the money. I’m more talking about for a subsequent video or something.. like as an example… put crapped on idom for years till idom switched to poison. That switch was what won idom all those tournies. And nothing wrong with that.. he took a character that he thought could counter Karin and it worked out well for him. Punk should have adjusted and found a counter for poison (and Laura) he tried cammy but that didn’t work out.
As all americans you think that because you are or were influenced by Punk everbody in the world was too. Who is the goat?! Tokido or Punk. Picking Tokido or Picking Punk you are not wrong. They both have something where they are better than all other players. Tokido more consistence, Punk in his best almost unstoppble and they prove that along many years.
I think each CHARACTER should have a rating. Rather than flat out the best player it should be who is the best with each character because their abilities are so different. My favorite CHARACTER in the entire franchise back to 1987 is URINE and the competitor I most admire is NEMO because he is arguably the best player of URIEN. Diago is arguably the best GUILE player but he is NOT the best at the other characters (he can beat ME with any character and with one hand behind his back,I just mean not the absolute best).
Love Whose Line lol. But it is important to consider when we have like 3 years of competition that we can't exactly track objectively and Punk and Tokido's results both took a "dive" in that time period. If I wanted to cut out the years 2020-2022, then sure. But it's important to at least try to fill in some blanks where we can
Just wanna preface this that I'm not being sarcastic or anything here: if that was the case, you could have a 20% win rate of tournaments and only win Capcom Cup and still be the GOAT?
@@qmanchu if I win key matches in football but lose some matches Aswell but still make it to the super bowl and win, are the other teams better because they beat me? there's only two key matches to win in fighting games, that's capcom cup and evo. I put capcom cup higher though on the list.
@ihavetubes that's not really true though. Those are the biggest but there's been tons of major tournaments of similar level to evo. And even if not, Tokido getting 2nd at capcom cup while also winning almost 20 majors throughout the games few years of offline competing definitely outweighs 2 key tournaments. Because you can't just factor in Mena winning 2. He failed to get top 3 of so many of the same tournaments Tokido won
@@qmanchu if you asked pros which tournaments they rather win the most its capcom cup and evo and that says a lot about those main events and the ones outside of it.
@@ihavetubes yea, and Tokido has won an Evo and got 2nd at the capcom cup that Mena won. So by what you're saying, he's only behind by a little bit. If you then count his literal dozens of other wins, he kinda dwarfs Mena with only 2 major wins under his belt. Tokido also just smoked Mena at Topanga like a week ago
It has to be tokido. Yes punk had the influence due to his stylish but systematic playstyle. But tokido was is the most solid player you could ever watch. In terms of basketball, punk would be like an Allen Iverson and Tokido would be like Tim Duncan. Not may put Tim as their GOAT PF cause of his very simplistic yet effective playstyle. Most would pick Dirk, Malone etc as their best pf of all time. As for Punk. Well. Do I need to say more how much influence AI gave to basketball world? People started wanting to wear cornrows, sleeves, baggy ass clothes etc.
“How many people wanna play like Tokido?” Feel like it’s really unreasonable to use this “metric”, it’s EXTREMELY western-biased. Punk and Mena’s influence in Japan/Asian playerbase would be incomparable to Tokido. We see a clip of Daigo praising here, but it should go without saying Daigo would have plenty of praise for Tokido as well.
It does go without saying. But what does need saying is that Punk did change the entire landscape of the game. Tokido dominated the competition for the entire game's life and yet he would mostly hop on transformations as the game progressed. He defined Akuma for a while but when he switched to Urien and Luke, many, including the Japanese didn't consider it a transformative choice from him. That's really all it comes down to. It's also not the most important metric. I literally say that I wouldn't call Punk the GOAT, but it makes sense to me why many do. That's all
I put Tokido over Punk by leaps and bounds. Metrics determine who's best WAY more than just boastful bragging and whatever influence you can bring up. The thing about your examples far as Jordan and Tiger Woods, they were the greatest because of METRICS and STATS in their prime. No one was over them. Much more like Tokido than Punk.
The Japanese are more reserve in their emotions. It’s a cultural thing. Tokido is the definition of, letting his gameplay do the talking. I know Mena won Capcom Cup Twice, but I don’t really agree with the last one and how they handle CPT in general that year. Japan was not fairly represented in the tour, and many tournaments were played in shitty online matches. Punk, has great influence, but in my opinion he’s been more toxic to the scene than helpful.
Japan I think was as fairly represented as we'd ever get yknow? For a region that small, getting 2 qualifiers and a world warrior is pretty big. Capcom had their hands tied pretty much but I think they did well with what they could. Overall, the game's history was dictated pretty heavily by the pandemic :/ And in regards to Punk that's very possible. Can't really say objectively. All we know for sure is that the influence is there haha
Fighting games are so interesting because old school players can stay pro above 40+. Looking forward to Tokido vs Daigo in SF6!
I don't think it's a feature of fighting games, it's more like daigo is a genetic freak who dedicated his life to being the best. fighting games require an insane level of mechanics in terms of speed and precision AND good reaction times, both of which degrade heavily with age.
@@karayi7239 Honestly, I don't think things are as reaction times based as you think.
I believe things are more about life taking people away from people's time in games the most and maybe certain neuroplascitity to learn as a smaller cause.
I don't think until about 40, you need to be concerned about reaction times, but a lot of people think now that you turn 25 and can't compete in esports. That's not true and isn't true in any sports.
@@Mykulveli While it is true that reaction times peak at 24, I don't think the difference is game changing as I made it sound.
I actually take back that daigo is a genetic freak because it takes away from the amount of hard work and dedication he put in. It's shocking how he didn't get a career ending wrist injury cuz this is a HUGE reason why pros retire.
@@karayi7239 Yeah I wasn't necessarily calling out you because I can't glean all your views from your short post but I think there is that sentiment in the broad gaming community.
Daigo is definitely something else, no doubt.
@@karayi7239 u definitely need reactions but these oldheads have built muscle memory of move animations for decades. they have in depth game matchup knowledge and can still compete at the highest level which isnt something you could say in MOBAs or FPS games. Same thing with a legacy fighter like Tekken, some of the best players are approaching 40 and can still wipe the floor with up and coming players
Has to be Tokido for me
His consistency is just unmatched. A danger for the whole lifespan of the game
I will agree because Tokido had defeated both Punk and Daigo.
Great video, this is definitely the style of video that the traditional FGC needs on TH-cam.
I definitely agree. It's too easy to make up narratives and opinions because it's almost impossible to do proper research in the FGC. The CPT records from SFV and SFIV have been erased from the Capcom website because SF6 just came out
I think with the last part and how Tokido being more quiet compared to Punk, is really more of a difference in language. I think for me Tokido once said that if a Street Fighter Alien came down and only one person could be chosen to fight he wanted to be that guy and that has sat with me more than anything Punk has ever done but that message was from a Japanese tweet from 7 years ago. But like you said it’s really preference but I do think a language barrier does contribute to Tokido or any foreign player (with the exception of Daigo) not being talked about as much as Punk was
I agree with the language barrier. It's also about what we see as westerners. We don't see the results as easily of Tokido mentoring players or how he influences his local scene. I'm positive he does but I just can't know. But there is that thing that Punk says himself "they see us win too much it's normal". Tokido kinda suffers from that ironically enough lol. Him getting st at a major is cool but the fact that he'd get 2nd at like everything else somehow goes under our Radar
at the same time i feel like punk has left a stronger impression on the jp scene than tokido has outside of it
And the guy completely ignored tokidos most emotional moments after losses and wins with his two FT10s against daigo. Or they were FT15s... Anyway, legendary moments.
I stan tokido but it's so true that punk inspires people. I've genuinely thought before "damn i wish i had those footsies" and also about some of his quotes so often.
outside of statistical results, Tokido had that, "DAMN I JUST BEAT HIM" factor and Punk had that edge that we all were jealous of xD
These are reasons why their GOATS, when their status proceeds them in the game they played.
Infiltration is the GOAT of SFV
Punk is da Magneto of da FGC, He is quite literally a genius of fighting games, similar to Kizzie kay and Justin Wong, And the Mr.Fantasic of all fighting games he lays his hands on SonicFox, Then we got quite literally the Spiderman of da FGC aka SMUG. My SF5 CFN is SmugDaigoHamza on ps4 and my Guilty gear strive is PunkSmugHamza on ps4. My SF6 is Allahu-Akbar on Ps5. I got to platinum quite quickly, I kept think I was the Gold rank because I wasnt paying attention. Then I was thinking why am I fighting Platinum rank dudes when I am only silver rank? Like an idiot I kept looking at their rank and not my own. I got my ass handed to me by some players in ranked and got smack into Gold rank. Then got dawg walked a whole bunch in casuals 11 times by a God dang kimberly player then dawg walked by a Manon players. Then I jumped on ranked again lost so more then I called it a day. Sometimes it's best to take time out of ranked in casual matches and just lab and chill da fuck out in world tour mode. Because going on a losing streak in ranked really can hurt. Sft I give 10/10 overall but still prefer Sf5 gameplay.
@@MuhammadAli-xw4yc You know nothing about the fgc. Punk gets washed in many finals, he def struggles against tokido and many top players such as M.crimson and pros from japan. Not to mention he can never beat infiltration. Punk is highly overrated. Infiltration, Higuichi, Tokido, Mcrimson and many others wash him easy.
@@kelvin303 You sound emotional my dude. They all wash each other. I have watched tons of their livestreams, in their battle lounges, Also you arrogant punk, I watched Mr.Crimson cook up Idom,punk,that world class zeku player dude from britain at dat tournment in europe. But a few days later Punk cooked Mr.Crimson for free in long ass set. I have fought in offline tournments in arcades in 1992 in Nagoya, roppongi and all over tokyo. Dude don't be so arrogant. I have been involved in fight game community since Street fighter 1. Young bucks nowadays huh.
Punk's Karin and iDom's Laura among the best players who made their characters fit their own style.
Great video! This really put the competitive life of sfv in perspective
Glad you enjoyed! It was fun to do this as a means to wrap up SFV which is my most played game of all time. Wanted to show it love
I agree with pretty much everything you put forward here. I'd love to see a video on the Greatest SF4 player too. It's an interesting one since there's no CLEAR choice imo. If I had to pick, I'd choose Daigo but Momochi and Infiltration have arguments to be made as well
I got Daigo two evos and he made all evo top 16s or something like that 😵💫😵💫
@@Purlypurlingtonbut Mena won 2 Capcom cups
@@Kinesis327 but Daigo won 2 evos in a row and made evo top 16 very year
We talking about SFIV here i think, and mena not even playing back then probably
If u talk about sfIV, Infiltration was probably the best player, hands down.
Amazing video! When i think of this game its Punk and Tokido that first come to mind. I ride with Punk because he changed the game
In term of influence I would have said MenaRD. He litteraly help and sponsored the WHOLE Domican Rep region so that they could be put on the map. With new events like Game Over, or new players makin waves like Crossover and Caba. Doing that from scratch is more influential imo. I wonder what are y’all thought about it
I'm Dominican and I love this man so much. Even got a picture with him at a local tournament. It's amazing what he has done for fighting games in our country and he'll forever be number 1 in my heart.
I agree his influence is huge. I mostly didn't mention it because honestly, his invitational results alone weren't enough to carry him all the way to the level of punk and tokido. He was still way behind. Winning 2 capcom cups is insane, thought to be almost impossible even. But he just isn't consistent at any other events when it comes to getting top 3.
That's not to at his influence is less than the other guys', it just didn't fit in the message of this video
@@qmanchu ooh I understand now it is true that while he was consistent it wasn't on the same level as Punk and Murder Face. But I think that it should have been mentionned noneless because it cause an "injustice" on his side in the video, like he did nothing even tho we all know how much he did for the fgc. To the point Fuudo was playing Birdie too. But It doesn't invalidate your point in your video in the grand scheme of thing your analisys still make sense and watching it was cool for me
@Celrok production yeah I should've been more clear and established that I was moving on from Mena at that point. He's an immensely impactful player. He's built up so much in just a few years.
I meant him no disrespect and if I felt the video wasn't already too long, I'd have said more about him. Maybe in the future of SF6
Most influential player for the Dominican Republic
Vanilla 4 player here, skipped 5 and am back for 6. This was a good summary of what I missed. Had never heard of punk till last week.
Punk has the highest peak and the most influence and his consistency isn’t bad either, it has to be punk for me.
i feel like it’s pretty clearly tokido but punk definitely has an argument
Yeah that was the interesting thing about really looking back. Tokido is clearly the most dominant player BUT Punk took off basically a whole year if not more. Really makes you wonder where he'd have ended up if he kept that competitive drive
Both gets washed by Infiltration. Infiltration 3-0 Punk.
Incredible video! Can't wait to show this to my not so FGC-interested friends
Glad you enjoyed! Excited to do more like this in the future!
If Infiltration never got cancelled in 2018 history would be completely different and a lot of dudes would be getting second place in that alternate universe.
Very true. Pretty unfortunate. I have no idea what the status of all those things is more but I'd hope to see him back
Pretty good life lesson in there: Don't commit domestic violence and then try to hide it.
@@qmanchu
He's made great strides to improve himself and he's even losing some money keeping the lights on at a Korean local he runs. But I hear people are showing up to support it.
I would like to see him back too, but you know how people are these days. It's usually a particular crowd, who knows.
@@iantaylor7988 a lot of it is BS though. The life lesson here is do your own research and don’t listen to all the BS served on the plate.
I care more about saying how amazing your video was than expressing my opinion on who’s the best, amazing work
That means a lot! Thanks so much! I'm really glad you enjoyed!
Great video and absolutely solid now I wonder how will SF6 will go
I dunno... I think the argument made against Tokido's influence was a little flawed. The video even presented his most famous "Fighting Games are something, sooo.... Great". I remember watching that and it resonated with me in a way more profound and moving than anything else in the FGC tbh. Its the reason i went to EVO the next year, and reignited my love of the beautiful grind😊
The big thing about influence that we can actually measure is how the game changed in response to a certain player. Punk was a driving force for everyone to change their playstyles where Tokido didn't have that much influence over how the game was actually played.
The other way we can measure it is by the players each directly influenced and the results of those players. Punk has directly led to the qualifications of at least 3 players to Capcom Cup whereas Tokido's students aren't as prevalent. Now that could be because of how the Japanese scene is open for everyone to learn from everyone and is possibly flawed. That's why I leaned into the first thing about how Punk changed the way the whole world played.
That's really the whole argument of why Punk would outdo Tokido there. I would've said more directly about Tokido but the video was already so long
I like how u can tell punk knew mena was gonna win the tournament with that combo
Great video dude, it just shows how much the community loves the game since there are so many great players it's nearly impossible to determine who's the best, cause they all are!
I think the one thing you missed about hte influence metric is SO MANY of the best runs that we saw, fujimura probably having the scariest peak, punk insane year, infiltration the main metric htat finally settled them as the TOP SHIT was that they wehre able to pass tokido. He was the benchmark not for being good not for being great but for being the best and that influence passes all language barriers nad is crazy
You're so right. Tokido became a damn benchmark lmao
Punk recently beat a tournament and literally said, I hate when they root for the hometown player it only makes me wanna beat them more
Ill say it til im blue, THIS IS THE CONTENT WE NEED, less tier list more this, good stuff man, this shit keeps the community live
I'm glad you enjoyed! It means a lot to me!
Punk with Karin for me
He showed the world a new way to play SFV
Please.. Punk got washed by Infiltration. Infiltration is the GOAT if sfv
Hard to say it’s Punk, when his demon Tokido beat him multiple times when it matters
@@Gold_Lightan Thank You.. some people try to ignore this fact..
good ass video bro, enjoyed it very much
Ayyy I'm glad! It was a blast from the past to look at all this old footage. SF5 was my first "spectator fighting game" so it was really fun to get into all the details
Amazing video ! I like that you try to be the most objective possible.
One for sf4 would be great too .
Thank for the good work.
Ps: sorry for my English . I speak french.
Great stuff as usual!
Arguably the quality of competition was weaker earlier on. I mean the best folks were still winning of course, but I don't know if we should discount folks who peaked late (like iDom) the same as folks who peaked early (like Voldemort).
That being said, just checking out @FGCombo it looks like iDom v. Punk is even, slightly favoring Punk, so hard to make a strong case there, and Punk absolutely did change the game.
Only reason I discounted players like Idom who peaked late is because there's just not as much to go off of. To me, I wanted to see who held the game down in aspects of consistency, longevity, and scale. You can have consistency and scale, but without longevity, it's just hard for me to call them the GOAT.
I wasn't sure how to go about that objectively. Especially since players like Kawano became world class during the pandemic lol. The life of SFV is a weird one the more you look back at it
My heart definitely says Tokido because I feel like I saw him in top 8 of every single tournament worth mentioning for like 7 years straight
Crazy thing is, aside from like capcom cup, this is true
@@qmanchu definitrly thr most consistent, Punk certainly made more of an impact atleast in North America, had me standing in my room screaming at the TV more than once
Agree. Tokido dominates
It doesn't really help that just like Infiltration before him, Tokido fell off in the twilight years of the game. Sure he still can place very well and consistently in tournaments but he wasn't the unstoppable force he was in 2017 or 2018. And even then he never managed to clinch Capcom Cup during either of those years. Tokido will forever rank in the upper echelons of any fighting game he takes seriously and commits to full time. That's just the POWER of the Japanese scene that drives and shapes players like Tokido to be at their best to compete. But if I had to take all 3 of the top players (Punk, MenaRD and Tokido) in to account factoring in tourney results, consistency over the entire stretch of the game is something you would def have to take into account.
Punk in 2017, no one could touch this guy it seemed. Everyone was terrified of running into him in tournament in NA. It wasn't until Tokido showed up and showed that he can bleed, that Punk's awe and wonder surrounding him dispersed. But even then he remained a threat, having an off year in 2018 but coming back with avengeance in 2019, and remaining a solid credible threat up till the end of the game, the only other NA player being able to best him in Tourney being Idom.
Likewise MenaRD walked a similar path, and what's even more astounding, did so from a SMALLER almost nonexistent scene. Mena had said it on multiple accounts that the DR scene struggled to compete. They didnt have the ability to gather and train and deepen their understanding of the game as quickly or as easily as bigger scenes like Europe, Japan, or the US. They had to put in the grind and work 2x as hard. That's why when Mena won CC in 2017 he used a sizeable portion of his winnings to set up a facility where local players from his scene could gather and train and share tech on fighting games in general. He took a bit of a dip there afterwards but always managed to stay in the limelight when showcasing top players and came back with avengance in 2022 to win the game for a 2nd time against the worlds best at CC. Coupling these two factors together (the small scene and his ability to consistently place high at tournies or even win the biggest of them all) is why I personally rank Mena as the top player in the game. He has the invitationals and tourney results to back up this claim. Only his influence suffers, but as we discussed, his "influence" was always kneecapped from the start, as DR never had the ability to get its name out their as a competitive region. I hope with more wins from people like Mena we can see that country come to rank among the worlds best, not too dissimilar from what we are seeing with Pakistan and Tekken right now.
Something that clearly needs to be mentioned about punk.. his character was nerfed over and over and over again even though he was the only person really winning with her consistently matchup to matchup at the highest levels. This had a lot to do with his “fall” during 2018. Idom didn’t get great till he switched to poison who is a rigged ass character. Man probabky overall deserves the most respect playing that level that he did, coming from where he came from.
@@dimex3362 I think this is a misconception about Idom. When he won that capcom cup, he only used Poison for grand finals against Punk. Every other set was with Laura. We all remember it being Poison who took it because she was there those final rounds, but Idom was mostly there because of Laura
@@qmanchu idom literally switched to poison and won capcom cup.. let that sink in. Laura beat all the bums but never did well against punk. Idom couldn’t outskill punk so he counter picked him and in so doing, found a character that beats most of the cast. But make no mistake, the capcom cup win and all his proceeding results are due to poison. When the going got tough with Laura, poison was always the next pick. And there’s nothing wrong with that.. but it is worth mentioning that’s the only reason he ever beat punk.
@@dimex3362bro didn’t you watch the Evo less than a year ago when he did the craziest losers round with Laura only? He elevated a character that was seen as flawed by a mass of the scene. He went to 3 real tournaments in 2018 and did top 6 for each of them.. what Idom did is that he elevated a character in ways that were unparalleled. Was Punk an insane Karin? Yes, but so was Bonchan and later Killzyou, was Tokido a crazy Akuma/Luke/Urien? Yes, but also NL and Takamura and Samurai and Nemo. There was no Laura and to be honest, there never was another Laura who I could see taking more than 2 games off Idom in an FT10, and for me that makes him belong in this convo. He uses poison for 3 matches and now he won the whole tourney with her zzz
@@javoclean960 when he couldn’t hack it with Laura he alsways switched to poison… punk also created Karin. Bingham and phenom were both carbon copies of his karin.. and neither had punks success because they couldn’t hack all the matchups that punk could, with her.
That's not what the "eye test" is. The "eye test" in sports is whether someone who has a good eye for good players can tell whether the player is good. Whether Tokido is influential or not isn't related to the "eye test".
I really disagree with Punk being the most influentional, Punk has a lot of haters who joke about him choking on the big stage, dumb opinion of course, punk is obviously one of the best, but Tokido is respected by everyone, the guy was considered a top 10 player in every year of the game. While it can look like he was not that good at the covid era, even that is false when you see his results at Topanga and SFL JP. Tokido also have the best storyline and the best moments, his FT10 with daigo is famous as hell, the story of the fighting game god who always got 2nd place deciding to focus everything on 1 game and becoming the best for his hard work, people respect tokido as the guy who became the best by pure discipline, you have the memes, like the guy using a fucking scale mid tournament.
Also, "Fighting Games are something so great", honestly its just impossible to best that. Tokido is the GOAT of SFV and its not even close.
You mean Infiltration is the GOAT of SFV..
@@kelvin303 one year of extreme dominance is not equal to being in the conversation of the best in the game in every year. I get that its very possible that infiltration would have done as well as tokido over the years if he wasnt banned, but that is just an assumption and dont hold weight over real results
@@leonardopolizelmartins5794 That’s the problem you and many aren’t understanding, he beat Tokido way more times, it’s clear as day that Infiltration is a better player than him while using weak characters such as Juri and ED.
@@leonardopolizelmartins5794 Not to mention he dominated from 2016 -2018 not just one year my friend. Even after ben banned he was still performing at such a high level… factz are the factz. He’s definitely the goat for SFV.
The biggest reason I say influence tilts in Punk's favor is because of how the game transformed cuz of him. Legitimately, dealing with language barriers and biases, that's probably the only measurable metric for influence aside from the players these guys mentor winning tournaments. It's not 100% clear how the mentoring works in Japan since it's a tighter community and everyone seems to have access to everyone.
So that's why I give the edge to Punk. But that isn't to say in other factors, it's not close. It's very close
I know him as
Low
Tier
GAWWWDDD
According to LTG, it's LTG.
You should root for ltg, NOW
clearly it's the guy who played F.A.N.G. and won touranments with him
Any way that was a good video. Maybe the most realistic goat vídeo
That was the goal. Just to be realistic and as objective as possible. Going into it, I didn't actually perceive Tokido as THAT strong over time. I knew he had his movements but no, he's always been a menace.
Glad you enjoyed
@@qmanchu
How didnt you notice? Two back to back evo finals, capcom cup final, Eleague champion, first or second in almost all topanga leagues. And now in your video you informed me that he was top 3 in all seasons of the capcom pro tour.
If we only consider results nobody would come close, but I think that at their peak Punk is more virtually invincible. I'm a tokido fan and I know that he has bad matchups like Gachikun' Rashid or Kichpa's Gief, unlike Punk that sometimes seems to have no gap to beat him. Thats why i think any of both can be the goat
@saraiva luis das neves at the time I noticed, obviously. But after like 3 years of no offline competition, recency bias got in the way. The specifics escaped me was all. I also wasn't into SFV competitions until around 2017 when Punk was already on the scene. I entered the fighting game genre via competitive smash haha
To me it’s tokido he’s just my favourite and I’m biased as fuck Cus watching him got me into the fgc. The murder face is king and the quote “ fighting game is something … so great “ lives rent free in my head
I started watching street fighter because of Punk. I don't even play the game or fighting games in general. I learned about Mena Rd and Tokido AFTER Punk opened the gateway for me.
What’s the win loss record between Tokido and Punk head to head in SF5?
Punk actually has a winning record. 6-4 over Tokido
@@qmanchu i know you’ve covered all angles in analyzing this topic, do you think this head to head record is significant. I certainly think so. Thanks for the content.🙏🏽
@liluziBurt667 in general, yeah head to head is important. But it's not feasible to use for this context. I chose the metrics I did because they're easy to measure and also compare year to year.
If I did head 2 head, I'd have to break it all down by year because some years one player dominated the other. Generally, it'd be too much work but it also would become murky and confusing quickly
so where would you classify Daigo? He may not have the wins, but he is a legend.
Daigo is probably the greatest Street Fighter player of all time. He's been at the top of almost every game competitively, even as he grows older and the games grow more popular. He's a legend without a doubt but not a Top 5 SFV player. Maybe top 10 at best but I'd have to do a lot of research there to be sure
Goat at general sf but not the goat at sf5
@@qmanchu Daigo was probably top 15 in SFV. He didn't gel with SFV like Tokido gelled with SFV. The switch up was instantaneous that you couldn't blame age. Daigo was arguably top 1-3 at end of SF4, and immediately switched to outside of top 15. On the other hand, Tokido was probably top 25-30 in SF4 or even top 15 and immediately gelled with SFV to where he was top 2.
New games switch up rankings for a lot of players. Hence why I have a lot of respect for players who have been a top player for so many SF games, where they have to abandon their top in the game status, and re earn it.
We'll see how SF6 switches things up. Daigo at the very least already looks more comfortable beating top pros than the early part of SFV.
So what you're saying is that basically Tokido is Stoic Ryu and Punk is Fiery Ken. Gotcha!
The 18 minute mark definetly reminded me of the Armada vs Mang0 Melee GOAT argument which I find is funny that another game boils down to the same set of factors
Yeah, in my opinion it's Armada hands down BUT Mango still playing to this day at top level is so staggeringly impressive that him being the GOAT makes sense too
@@qmanchu true it's the same situation. Armada has the better stat argument but Mang0 has the better influence argument
can you make a video on who the strongest character's are in ggst and street fighter 5 based only off of tournament results?
Check out my "Modern Tier Lists Don't Matter" and "Are you carried in ggst" videos. They're older videos on this channel but probably close to what you're looking for
such a godlike video
I actually started playing SF by watching punk
It is Tokido by a landslide, most consistent and best average performance at the biggest relevant events
Agree
Can we get a update on this rankings? Cuz the last time i checked menadr is 💩 on everyone u just mentioned
Well we wouldn't really update the SF5 rankings with SF6 results now would we?
What i ask you is, if you qualifie to capcom and prepare yourself to play Who you would study to face? I think the answer for many Will be Tokido, Punk and other that did well in capcom pro tour, that was why players like Mena, Idom or even Gachikun has more chance to win capcom cup.
Phenom is definitely the most consistent SF5 player, may not be the best but I always put money on him being in top 8
He is incredibly consistent! I always root for him when I can
Punk definately has the most experience overall, able to play just about any character pretty well. Tokido prob has the biggest Resume when it comes to tournaments. And MenaRD in the 2023 Season prob had the most playtime for that one year than anyone else, no one even came close for Capcom Cup. His matchup knowledge is unparalleled to anyone atm
I'd actually say Tokido's mastery of matchups is the unparalleled one. Just to understand what I mean, watch his performance at Topanga a few weeks ago. He didn't lose a single set and won with creative responses to every matchup.
Everyone, including Mena, was at a loss
When you were playing the 3rd Strike Character theme during the "Invitationals" portion of the video, what version/remix was that? It didn't sound like the original OST. Seemed like it was remastered.
Nvm
I found it for those that are interested:
th-cam.com/video/OALTT25OoVE/w-d-xo.html
Daigo is the GOAT when it comes to influence. Haven't you notice how these FGC streamers like Jwong. Nephew. and even Punk himself has Daigo's name in their uploaded videos on their YT channel just to gain more views. How many "Daigo parrys" has Jwong uploaded. Don't believe me? go check for yourself.
Even in tournament streams. Fans always ask if Daigo is partcipating in the said events.
Having said all of that, Tokido is the GOAT of SFV. He was the most dominant. You can't judge it by influence because Daigo beats all of them easily.
In addition to all of that. You even have Daigo's face for your thumbnail and you only mentioned daigo's name in the video once. I wonder why is that.
Using CPT results though, winning capcom cup multiple times has to get weighted over everything. If it’s not punk, objectively, it has to be Mena
I'd agree with you if Mena had won anything else. I can agree he's been the strongest SFV player in the world on those given nights, but he's also failed to qualify for Capcom Cup, not won any other major CPT tournament, and has a losing record against Punk/Tokido.
Objectively, capcom cup was weighted over everything else in the video, and he still falls short because that's kind of all he has
U HIT THE NAIL with Influence. That's why in NBA we talk about Michael Jordan and Kobe, but we don't talk as much about Tim Duncan that has the same number of rings as Kobe or Bill RUssel that as more rings than anybody will ever have. Or wilt Chamberlain with soo many records we KNOW it's impossible to beat. But it doesn't matter, Influence plays a BIG part and that's something Michael Jordan has and Wilt no matter how many record or Bills rings will ever have. Michael Jordan has a global influence in the sport known as basketball, and only players later touched near that level. Kobe, LeBron. Tim Duncan might be just as great as Kobe, but he doesn't have the influence.
tokido 🐐'd
You mean Infiltration..
Goat
It’s between punk and tokido either one you can argue for
I think Punk had an infiltration in 2012 aura around him. There was a moment where it felt like he couldn’t lose, making many international players sweat.
Whatever happened to infiltration???
He had a legal dispute with his wife at the time of domestic abuse. The case was made public and he was let go from his team and CPT banned him.
Then when things looked like he could've been let back in, he was found to be involved with rigging tournaments. And then after all that he went on stream and said a lot of racially charged things for some reason.
So it just seemed like there was a mountain of issues and bad PR
Punk has never won a Capcom Cup or an Evo. Definitely not the greatest without either one of those.
before I watch the vid, i will list in order Tokido, Punk, Idom, INFIL, Mena
it's me
Here after punk won evo, literally one of the most if not the most stacked evo for sf of all time. Sfv combined sfvi, punk takes it so far.
I agree big time.
@@qmanchu Mr youtuber himself. Who you think the best in the world right now for 2024 sf6?
@qoharjamalhaqy526 it's switching hands pretty quickly but at the moment it's between Punk and Big Bird. EWC is the next big event and if either of them win that, I'd definitely say that person is the best
@@qmanchu Whoa not even a MenaRD mention. Interesting. I think since right after capcom cup x the seasonal ranking should reset and start and since then, punk has done more and is more consistent than Mena.
Ever since Capcom Cup x:
Punk: CEO, WCG Games, EVO + consistency and dominance
Mena: Redbull Kumite and evo japan (which is not the same as EVO and not as significant)
Big Bird: Dreamhack + consistency and dominance
@qoharjamalhaqy526 my issue with placing Mena is that he can be the best in the world on certain days. But it's very often he fails to even get top 16 in super majors. BUT he's made huge strides from the end of SFV to now. He was probably my pick for best in the world last year. Either him or Chris Wong
I played one game online and won. I retired after that game with a 100% win record. Therefore i am the greatest SFV player ever.
I picked up SF5 and played Akuma because of Tokido so while I see what you’re saying in terms of influence, the choice is clear to me.
Oh hell yeah, his Akuma reign of terror was insane! I would've said more about that but the video was already so long, didn't really fit. Tokido's influence over people switching to that character is probably unrivaled except for the uptick of people playing Poison after Idom maybe. But even then, Tokido is still prolly more so
Man I understand the answer but I still consider Mena the GOAT
He is becoming an icon of the Dominican Republic to the point even people that have never touched a controller know about Mena
Influence was a part that I was a tad afraid to talk about. I know Tokido has had a MASSIVE influence over the jp FGC that I as an American will never understand, and I'm sure Mena is the same with LATAM. Tokido and Mena both have invested heavily in their communities as well but at the end of the day, I just think Punk overall dictated how we played the game thru its life.
Calling Mena the GOAT is totally respectable too though
@@qmanchu yea I agree punk has done more but I’m just EXTREMELY biased towards Mena since he has even appeared in national newspapers here in the Dominican Republic
@Juan not only that but winning 2 capcom cups and being from the DR is legitimately insane. I know the DR is strong, we've seen it. But it's not a very big/populous region nor does it get the same esports opportunities as USA or JP. So if anything, he had a handicap of sorts compared to those 2 and STILL manages to be in the discussion
@@diegoval2010 Your freaking name is Juan. And you're talking about a Dominican player. Of course your bias will cloud your judgement which makes no sense to even reason with you. Statistical data, facts, influence, etc. doesnt matter because your mind was already made up once you pressed play. Regional/local influence is cool. But in the world of SFV or the FGC, no one wanted to be like MenaRD. Ppl wanted to be like Punk bro. And I don't even really like him.
@Etridamu lol wait a second the dude was extremely reasonable. Being able to point out your bias is being reasonable, no need to come at him like that
This video is rating 10/10 drip plain and simple 😍😍😍😍
Sorry I'm over what Infiltration did that's my boy right there
I think the issue is after the initial scandal, 2 or 3 more scandals popped up and it doesn't look like any brand wants to be associated with that right now.
He's been in online CPT events tho so I guess that ban is up. But it's up to offline tourneys to let him back individually
I was ready to press the like button, until the "influence" part.
Lol that's totally fine! But you realize that's just to account for things we can't account for in the last years.
Plus as a send off to SFV, it's important to bring attention to the fact that the game wouldn't be played the way it was if not for Punk. My GOAT is still Tokido, but I can't really discredit people who say Punk
Great video. I didnt think punk was that strong, he kinda gave me vibes of "we have sonicfox at home" but damn, to be the only one to come close to the bloodthirsty monster that tokido is...
I'll admit, at the end of the video I was about to write a cringe angry comment like: "how can you say punk is better than tokido because he is louder, you know nothing about sf5 you scrub REEEE". But then I saw your other comments explaining better and held myself. Please let me apologize with this like button.
In SFV, it's Tokido... Daigo, Tokido and Infiltration have the most Tier 1 tournament wins in Street Fighter, as well as runner-ups. They also have the most Tier 2 wins. If you compare MenaRD resume, it's paper thin. It's not even remotely close to Tokido. Tokido has 16 Tier 1 wins in just SFV alone. MenaRD has 4 in his ENTIRE career including all other fighting games.
for my money, daigo is always going to be the fighting game god. However, that's bias from me growing up watching daigo. Tokido and punk likely have more influence these days. In the case of street fighter V I feel like tokido is way better in every regard though punk is a close runnerup.
Daigo is the GOAT of Street Fighter in general in my opinion. I wanna do research to see if that's objectively true but I think it is. I don't think many if any come close
Its tokido, simple as.
Punk for the win. Even I, a regular scrub, got influenced by him. And he is the most enjoyable to watch playing.
Top 5 consistently: Punk, Tokido, Problem, Fuudo, Mena or Phenom.
Fuudo is a player I want to tall about more in the future. He's absolutely insane in the long run but never really gets any spotlight
“Of all time” always sounds funny since the game is less than 10 years old. 😂
Great video besides the "influence" part. It just shows a big USA bias on your side and the fact that it's the final section of the video just seems like a cop out to put your fav in, kinda left an bad taste in my mouth in an otherwise nice video.
I feel like people are interpreting that the influence part means Punk won over Tokido in this video lol. It's literally just there as an extra point to look at. There's no preference to Punk here. It's just important, as a goodbye to SFV, to talk about how Punk was able to change the way the WORLD plays the game. That's all lol. I say myself that my pick is Tokido here but saying Punk wouldn't be crazy in my eyes is all
tokido all the way, punk is really good but this aint an influencer competition
Mena for me is the best, his range of characters set him apart too.
I know you said certainly not Punk but I'm curious as to why. Punk has played more characters in tournament than Mena has, so he's got him down on range
By individual achievements, I think it has to be Tokido because of his results throughout the lifespan of SFV while being in the strongest region but if we're equating greatness to who influenced and changed how SFV was played, it's Punk. How he played the game right from his arrival was so different than what everyone else was doing that it straight up feels that he's playing a different game altogether. He presented a completely different blueprint on how SFV should be played and opened the eyes of many on what was actually possible that the Japanese FGC had massive gatherings dedicated to replicating and trying to figure out his style. If you compare how SFV was played at the highest level before and after Punk made it big, it's like night and day.
Lol daigo hold my beer.... daigo had thousands of trophy that's why even Tokido and God's respect him... He got guilty gear champions sf 2 3 4 and alpha vampire savior/dark stalkers trophies
This guy gets it
Exactly. And I don’t think the Japanese did that for any other player. They called punk the best in the world.. I don’t think they did that for anyone. Even Nemo came out and challenged punk to a ft10 cause in Nemos words “punk is easily the best player in the world”
@Dime X I think one player who the Japanese did talk about like that was Gachikun actually. Very understated player in my opinion.
@@qmanchu I would have never known that, cheers :) or was it just gachis cr.fp? I remember them complaining about how well he used it
Can’t wait for the Senior Citizen division in Street Fighter Daigo still gonna be Flash Kicking till he’s 80years old😂
The only problem I have with your influence argument is that all the people in sports you've compared them to, had the metrics to back up their influence. Not to mention what you said was Punk's greatest strength in influence is something that all Japanese players do. They are the strongest region because of how they uplift and make each other stronger.
I think it's easy to say Punk was the most vocal... but if I had to choose who was a better role model? Punk acts like his name... Tokido acts with respect.
Role model sure and I'm not saying Punk has influence cuz he's vocal. He's influential because the whole world changed their play styles to be more like his and he's directly gotten several people into capcom cup. That's pretty much it.
And I agree that Japan's greatest strength is that but that's a bigger community effort that's harder to pin down to one person. Directly tying Punk to many capcom cup qualifications is pretty big. That's all.
Tokido with Akuma was peak of SFV. But sadly Capcom just can't stop nerf Akuma and he pretty much struggle to keep up. Menat was OD at that time and his Akuma trashed so bad and it was so disheartening. He forced to change main.
His Urien and Luke never as good. Tokido just Akuma and Akuma is him period.
The "Influence" section is completely irrelevant to the topic. We're looking for the greatest SFV player of all time, not the greatest SFV influencer of all time. Only results matter, and Punk has not had the results lately to be in the conversation.
i agree that the "influence" section is wack but instead should be considered an "overall skills" section. like how good are the players in game, how dominante are their wins, do they win from losers or winners more often, things like that. if you were to consider raw ability, i believe it's punk>idom>tokido>mena. but also for an overall career evaluation, you can't pretend like their past successes don't matter as much just because they aren't performing that well currently
Ye for overall skills it’s clearly punk. He still does stuff that no one else can do.
I'm still believe Infiltration will not lose to anyone but Tokido.
I do think the influence part, is HEAVLY biased towards the west. If you ask people in Japan and maybe even just nearby Asian countries, they would pick Daigo or Tokido most likely and their influence in Japan and maybe even the Asian SF5 scene in general, is much greater than any of the western players. As a western person who has lived in Asia, and now lives in South Korea, I know that sometimes, even the most famous people in our eyes, are not well known in Japan or Korea and these countries also have a LOT of pride in their players as well in every sport. The fact that Tokido and even Daigo, are being talked about as the GOAT of SF5 by us westerners, shows how much influence they actually have and how good they are. Especially since they can’t even really communicate with us the same way someone like Punk, who is a native english speaker, can either, as they mostly speak in Japanese as can be seen from their social media for example. I recommend watching some of Tokidos videos, then you can see how much influence he really has in Japan at least. So in the end, my pick would be Tokido, in terms of statistics he is the GOAT, and in term of influence, I do not think he falls behind Punk in anyway, especially if you look at Japan.
Liked the video though. But do think the influence metric is a bit skewed, as it is heavily western biased. In the end though, they all gave us some good SF5 to watch.
The section is definitely biased but the only point I really want people to walk away from with this is how small Japan actually is lol. If Punk had this hold on the entire world AND Japan, where as Tokido could have a similar hold on Japan and less of the western world, the western world is so much bigger than a few small islands. And that's not to diminish what those players have done.
The biggest thing is Punk changed the way the game was played across the globe, influencing even the likes of Tokido himself! It didn't really go the other way around. That's really all I meant by that section. I hope it's clear that even if I think Punk had more influence over the game itself, Tokido is in my opinion the undisputed greatest
@@qmanchu Yeah I see your point, still I personally think it’s hard to talk about influence because you can’t say Japan is small in a context like this.
For example, despite being 1/3rd of the US population and only having roughly 21% of the US GDP, Japan still manages to be the 3rd largest video game market (only about $14B behind the US) and the 2nd largest music market behind the US. So size doesn’t really matter, especially in something like fighting games where the scene is so region specific (e.g Korea and Tekken, KoF and South America).
Now add the fact that not all of Japan, Europe or America plays video games, and that the series itself is Japanese and existed a decade before in Japan before eventually coming to the US. So it has much more history in Japan, and the regional SF scene has a lot of support from Capcom and large companies, teams and the community. Even arcades, which are still popular in Japan, bought SF5 machines and now buy SF6 machines. So Japan might very well have the largest SF community.
Of course, it’s hard to know for sure things like this, but don’t think the difference in reach or influence is that big, especially looking at metrics like followers, views and history. The regional scene in Japan is really impressive and stacked. Influence might even be in Tokidos favor for all we know.
It’s really hard to say for a fact how much influence they’ve had, especially without any inside knowledge of the scene, especially in Japan. Unless they are a player like Knee or Faker for example. This is kind of a slippery slope, but I definitely think that Punk and Tokido are the two in contention for SF5, with my choice being Tokido as well. But I can definitely see why people would pick Punk, it’s well deserved too
@tigerchuu2148 yupp and I mostly agree but the biggest point I wanted to make was influence over the game, not influence over people since you can't rly measure that.
The influence over the game that Punk yielded was people slowing the game down and looking for confirms. Everyone started doing that once he began winning. Tokido's biggest influence over the game was people switching to Akuma and still not achieving his results. So Punk's influence affecting the top players of Japan itself and the best players globally is mostly what I mean here. Tokido didn't have that, which is why I mentioned Japan being small was important.
The other point I mention is we can directly trace 3 Capcom Cup qualifiers back to Punk and I admitted in the video that we can't know for sure about Tokido in this regard mostly cuz Japan's FGC is very different than ours. So I admit the bias there.
But basically not only did Punk change the way the game was played, he also directly influenced the outcomes of multiple Capcom Cups via people he trained or sponsored. That's heavy influence over the game, not people. If that makes sense?
Me saying "Nobody wants to play like Tokido" was definitely an inflammatory thing to put in that I regret cuz it takes away from my main point haha
It is clearly LTG.
I feel like your methodology substantially de-emphasized the COVID era of SFV, which as a result massively downplayed iDom and oversold Tokido. I would argue iDom was a top 5 player for about as long as Tokido was in terms of time, but because it overlapped with a period of time when CPT wasn’t happening it seems liken he only had 2 good years when in reality he had 4.
Tokido on the other hand, his results completely cratered the second he switched off Akuma. (Not saying that’s the reason why, just giving a timeframe) Not only did he not win many tournaments during this period, but he often didn’t even make top 8. If Tokido had maintained his dominance that he had from 2016-2019 into the rest of the game, then unquestionably he would have been the top player. But I feel like your data didn’t really acknowledge the slump that Tokido had near the end of SFV, and while Punk might not have been as dominant at any point as Tokido, he was a top player for more of the game’s lifespan.
There's almost no way to account for the covid era that makes sense. You can't even call Tokido's time in that era a slump. He destroyed people in Topanga and Japan's CPT qualifiers were the hardest in the world. So saying he took a dive after switching off Akuma isn't really true.
And if you wanna make the argument that I am downplaying Idom (which is entirely possible) you've got to find some way to somehow back it up. Idom also barely qualified for Capcom Cup this year, you gotta remember. He needed to resort to the World Warrior in which he faced a Japanese player lol. Comparing Japan to other regions doesn't really work unfortunately
Your entire write up undersells tokido and basically did what you accused the creator of doing but toward Idom and punk instead lol.
Tokido did not "slump" after Akuma. The man won the intel world open FFS and several other local tournaments during the COVID era while locked in the most competitive area of the game (Japan)
You sir
Have a bias
It would be good to go back to the original 5 and see how they stacked up against one another directly in competition. Meaning how many times is punk lose to mena tokido infiltration etc.. what are all their records against each other… if they’ve played. I saw punk play against infiltration in only one tournie and punk got destroyed (I thought he would tbh) that doesn’t mean I think until is better than punk.. but infiltrations style is something you have to get used to, in sf5.
@Dime X yeah and when they played it was ages ago, also at a local tournament before a major so it's hard to say how it would go down when Punk was in his prime and such. I though about including a section like this but honestly, it's not really what the video was about.
The nitty gritty of players vs players tells a muddled story that would need a whole lot of extra unpacking. Sticking to general tournament results paints a clearer picture.
Not to say head to head results aren't interesting, it's just hard to include Infiltration in that specifically cuz his prime was before Idom and Punk had their primes
@@qmanchu oh ye, I’m not saying for this video. I thought your video was right on the money. I’m more talking about for a subsequent video or something.. like as an example… put crapped on idom for years till idom switched to poison. That switch was what won idom all those tournies. And nothing wrong with that.. he took a character that he thought could counter Karin and it worked out well for him. Punk should have adjusted and found a counter for poison (and Laura) he tried cammy but that didn’t work out.
Its pretty agreed Mena, Punk and Tokido are the 3 that stand alone.
infiltration is there too but cancel culture on its BS
It's Punk. As great as MenaRD is, he won both capcom cup with Broken characters. Birdie (he was completely busted in that first cpt) and Luke in 2022
MenaRd is just different
MenaRD of course!!! 💪🇩🇴
As all americans you think that because you are or were influenced by Punk everbody in the world was too. Who is the goat?! Tokido or Punk. Picking Tokido or Picking Punk you are not wrong. They both have something where they are better than all other players. Tokido more consistence, Punk in his best almost unstoppble and they prove that along many years.
Mena RD for sure
Tokido was the best sfv player, although Punk wasn't too far behind.
Infiltration would have easily won last evo and capcup if he wasnt cancelled
I think each CHARACTER should have a rating. Rather than flat out the best player it should be who is the best with each character because their abilities are so different.
My favorite CHARACTER in the entire franchise back to 1987 is URINE and the competitor I most admire is NEMO because he is arguably the best player of URIEN.
Diago is arguably the best GUILE player but he is NOT the best at the other characters (he can beat ME with any character and with one hand behind his back,I just mean not the absolute best).
I think Ryan Hart has made this list actually
The argument was interesting until we went "welcome back to whose fight is it anyway? a game where scores are made up and metrics don't matter"
Love Whose Line lol. But it is important to consider when we have like 3 years of competition that we can't exactly track objectively and Punk and Tokido's results both took a "dive" in that time period. If I wanted to cut out the years 2020-2022, then sure. But it's important to at least try to fill in some blanks where we can
Without watching the video its easily between tokido or punk
Who ever wins Capcom cup the most is the goat until the record gets beat
Just wanna preface this that I'm not being sarcastic or anything here: if that was the case, you could have a 20% win rate of tournaments and only win Capcom Cup and still be the GOAT?
@@qmanchu if I win key matches in football but lose some matches Aswell but still make it to the super bowl and win, are the other teams better because they beat me? there's only two key matches to win in fighting games, that's capcom cup and evo. I put capcom cup higher though on the list.
@ihavetubes that's not really true though. Those are the biggest but there's been tons of major tournaments of similar level to evo. And even if not, Tokido getting 2nd at capcom cup while also winning almost 20 majors throughout the games few years of offline competing definitely outweighs 2 key tournaments.
Because you can't just factor in Mena winning 2. He failed to get top 3 of so many of the same tournaments Tokido won
@@qmanchu if you asked pros which tournaments they rather win the most its capcom cup and evo and that says a lot about those main events and the ones outside of it.
@@ihavetubes yea, and Tokido has won an Evo and got 2nd at the capcom cup that Mena won. So by what you're saying, he's only behind by a little bit. If you then count his literal dozens of other wins, he kinda dwarfs Mena with only 2 major wins under his belt. Tokido also just smoked Mena at Topanga like a week ago
It has to be tokido. Yes punk had the influence due to his stylish but systematic playstyle. But tokido was is the most solid player you could ever watch. In terms of basketball, punk would be like an Allen Iverson and Tokido would be like Tim Duncan. Not may put Tim as their GOAT PF cause of his very simplistic yet effective playstyle. Most would pick Dirk, Malone etc as their best pf of all time. As for Punk. Well. Do I need to say more how much influence AI gave to basketball world? People started wanting to wear cornrows, sleeves, baggy ass clothes etc.
Calling Tokido Tim Duncan is the weirdest comparison I've ever heard that works as well as it does lmao
“How many people wanna play like Tokido?”
Feel like it’s really unreasonable to use this “metric”, it’s EXTREMELY western-biased. Punk and Mena’s influence in Japan/Asian playerbase would be incomparable to Tokido. We see a clip of Daigo praising here, but it should go without saying Daigo would have plenty of praise for Tokido as well.
It does go without saying. But what does need saying is that Punk did change the entire landscape of the game. Tokido dominated the competition for the entire game's life and yet he would mostly hop on transformations as the game progressed. He defined Akuma for a while but when he switched to Urien and Luke, many, including the Japanese didn't consider it a transformative choice from him. That's really all it comes down to.
It's also not the most important metric. I literally say that I wouldn't call Punk the GOAT, but it makes sense to me why many do. That's all
I put Tokido over Punk by leaps and bounds. Metrics determine who's best WAY more than just boastful bragging and whatever influence you can bring up. The thing about your examples far as Jordan and Tiger Woods, they were the greatest because of METRICS and STATS in their prime. No one was over them. Much more like Tokido than Punk.
The Japanese are more reserve in their emotions. It’s a cultural thing. Tokido is the definition of, letting his gameplay do the talking.
I know Mena won Capcom Cup Twice, but I don’t really agree with the last one and how they handle CPT in general that year. Japan was not fairly represented in the tour, and many tournaments were played in shitty online matches.
Punk, has great influence, but in my opinion he’s been more toxic to the scene than helpful.
Japan I think was as fairly represented as we'd ever get yknow? For a region that small, getting 2 qualifiers and a world warrior is pretty big.
Capcom had their hands tied pretty much but I think they did well with what they could. Overall, the game's history was dictated pretty heavily by the pandemic :/
And in regards to Punk that's very possible. Can't really say objectively. All we know for sure is that the influence is there haha