Mister Crimson Wins Red Bull Kumite London

The fighting games community can be proud of having lots of different online tournaments. Such events as WNF, SaltMine League, and Next Level Battle Circuit keep the competitive environment alive during this difficult situation in the world. These events are great and everything, but when you see the power of offline tournaments, you understand — online and offline just can’t be compared; they are in different leagues. 

And not only are we talking about the in-game advantages of having your opponent sitting next to you and playing with no lag. It’s so much about alive emotions — tears in the eyes, jumping with excitement.

This difference of offline events became pretty obvious during the recent MK11, Tekken 7, and SoulCalibur 6 tournaments of the WePlay Ultimate Fighting League. Now, Street Fighter V got the same awesome treatment thanks to RedBull Kumite in London.

After the event, DashFight reached out to the winner, Mister Crimson, to ask a few questions about his experience. Check out this exclusive interview — Mister Crimson Interview: "I had no right to lose."

The event contained two parts: 

• Showcase of the soon-coming game Guilty Gear Strive (with many FGC celebrities) + SFV Team Tourney
• Street Fighter V tournament (15 invited players and one winner from the Last Chance Qualifier)

Red Bull Kumite London — Guilty Gear Strive showcase + SFV Team Tourney

Guilty Gear is a legendary series, so the approaching release of a new installment makes the whole community super curious. Many players already got a chance to try out Guilty Gear Strive thanks to its alpha/beta. But what about listening to the comments of the development team, delving into the gameplay mechanics, and watching matches of world-class professionals? All of these happened on the first day of Red Bull Kumite London.

In addition to that, SFV players were sorted into different groups for the main event and thus formed teams to have a small tourney for fun (and glory, of course). Please, enjoy those fights on video! (and spoiler alert! Team D won: iDom, Gachikun, Mister Crimson, and BoltStrike).

Red Bull Kumite London — Street Fighter V tournament

The primary show started with the Group Stage: four players, divided into four groups, are fighting in the Round Robin format to make it to Top 8.

Red Bull Kumite London — Group Stage results

Matches in all the groups are worth watching. Some of them bring us surprises. 

Tokido (who recently won the Topanga Championship 2020) lost two matches in Group A and left the tournament.

The same situation was with Gachikun from Group D, who couldn’t make it to the playoffs.

In Group C, three players had identical results in sets (2/1), and two of them had identical results in games (4/3). Only the direct victory of Phenom against Kawano allowed him to proceed further.

Red Bull Kumite London — Playoffs

The Quarter Finals were Bo5.

At the start of their match, Bonchan and Takamura exchanged games, but then the winner of Red Bull Kumite 2015 and EVO 2019 demonstrated the full power of his Sagat and won two games against the Akuma of Takamura. This match might give an additional point to the discussion of whether tier lists matter or not — usually, Sagat is placed lower.

The next match was between iDom, Capcom Cup 2019 champion, and Phenom, the winner of CPT 2020 EU East & ME 1. iDom knows Phenom’s main, Karin, very well thanks to matches against Punk, so the guy decided to take Poison instead of his usual main, Laura. The first game finished with full dominance of iDom, so Phenom switched to his secondary, Necalli — that didn’t really help. Phenom returned to Karin and finally managed to win a game. For the next one, iDom picked up Laura and totally lost the game. The result would be determined in the final game — Phenom was eliminated from the tournament.

Hurricane vs. Luffy was a match of Cammy vs. R. Mika. This matchup is especially interesting due to speculations of how overpowered Cammy was (three Cammy players won CPT 2021 events) and due to the following patch that nerfed this fighter. It was hard not to notice how strong Cammy was in this match (Hurricane won the first game). But then Luffy managed to win three (very close) games in a row and proceeded to the Semi-Final.

The match of Punk vs. Mister Crimson had an obvious favorite — many (including Mago) consider Punk the best SFV player in the world. But Mister Crimson started this fight with power. He won the first game with impressive confidence. The second one was much closer but with the same result. Punk proved his might (and the might of his Karin) in the next game. The final victory was still of Mister Crimson and his Dhalsim.

The Semi-Final Matches were iDom (Poison) vs. Bonchan (Sagat) and Luffy (R. Mika) vs. Mister Crimson (Dhalsim). They were of the first to 4 format.

Both Semi-Finals were very close — even if you can’t say so from the score of the iDom vs Bonchan match. However effective the attacks of Sagat were, the defense and positioning of Poison were better.

Luffy vs Mister Crimson — this was one of the tensest matches of the tournament. Two French players had lots of back-and-forth situations, both were super strong, but Mister Crimson celebrated the victory in the end.

The Red Bull Kumite Final (First to 5) was absolutely sick. Please, treat yourself to watching it and enjoy the style of both iDom and Mister Crimson. 

In the very final round, Mister Crimson defeated iDom and won Red Bull Kumite London. Congratulations!

We still don’t have much information about the next offline SFV tournaments, and still, there are lots of online top events happening right now (they are good even if offline ones are better), so don’t miss them. You could enjoy matches of regular qualifiers Capcom Pro Tour. And the huge Intel Open World series is right around the corner.

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