Cammy Wins Her First Street Fighter V Tournament at Saigon Cup

In every fighting game, there’s a “villain” character - a character that is deemed to be the most problematic in the game that the community bands together to root against. In Street Fighter history, that character has been Sagat in Street Fighter II and IV, and Chun-Li in Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike. In Street Fighter V, the most recent example of this vitriol was towards Abigail, though that intensity seems to have lessened in the latest patch. This is mostly because there’s a new most-hated character: Cammy.

The fighting game community (FGC) has deemed Cammy this version’s persona non grata due to her receiving “buffs” (gameplay changes that strengthen the frame data or stats of a character’s moves and abilities) while already being a strong character. These changes, along with the “nerfing” (gameplay changes that weaken the frame data or stats of a character’s moves or abilities) of other strong characters like Rashid, Guile, and Akuma, seem to have catapulted Cammy to the top of the mountain. Some in the community thought this would be another example of Sagat’s reign in vanilla Street Fighter IV. While the character was overpowering, Sagat players never were able to capture a major tournament, giving the illusion of balance. The thought was that Cammy would be the same. 

Well, get your fallout bunkers ready, because Cammy won her first tournament. 

Saigon Cup is an Asian point ranking event for the Capcom Pro Tour, so this is as close to a major tournament as it gets, and best believe there were some sharks swimming around for this tournament. Players like CYG|Fuudo, RB|Bonchan, DNGItabashi Zangief, RZR|Xian, AB|Poongko, CYG|GamerBee, FD|Haitani, Humanbomb, AB|StormKubo and more were in attendance and placed well in the Street Fighter V tournament, but it was Sim “NL” Gun of team UYU who captured the championship.

Now NL’s no slouch, he’s won tournaments in the past, and has placed pretty consistently in events throughout the life cycle of Street Fighter V. He switched to Cammy from Ryu last year, when the latter was nerfed into the ground, and has been pretty successful since then. That said, nobody expected a level of domination like this, where NL didn’t leave the Winner’s bracket en route to defeating Keita "Fuudo" Ai of CyGaming 3-2 in Grand Finals to win Saigon Cup 2018, and secure 150 Pro Tour points, which elevates him to 8th place in the tour standings.

You can watch the full Top 8 below or for more from Saigon Cup, check out the event’s Twitch channel. For more on the recent Street Fighter V balance changes, check out the Life of a Low-Tier Hero article on how to handle playing nerfed characters!