Tekken 7 at Takra Cup 2022

Pools

With such a stacked tournament, it's to be expected that some incredible matches can happen even in the pools. One of the first upsets happened when Umair Khan managed to eliminate KHAN, who almost won Evo earlier this year. They faced off twice, with Umair Khan taking both sets, first in winners and then losers bracket.

On the other hand, the Feng player from UK, JoKa, had a more successful run, making it to top 32 on the losers side after dropping one set and winning six!

Meanwhile, the Ashes player, ACR, started to dominate early on, sending the other Ashes player, Sajawal, and FATE's Farzeen to the losers bracket.

Top 32

By the time top 32 came around, the bracket became insanely stacked with talented players. As a testament to the Pakistan scene, we've also seen quite a few character specialists show that with enough work, you can compete against the best.

This includes Awais Rox with his incredibly Master Raven, beating Heera Malik in the first stage of top 32. Qasim Meer might have lost to Awais Honey's Akuma, but still showed everyone how strong his Anna is. Bilal continued to represent Bryan, his skill with the character taking him all the way to top 8. Usman and Ahsan Ali in particular gave us a look at the extremely rare high level Lei gameplay, a character you scarcely see in tournaments, and yet this time we got two of them!

The variety didn't stop there, outside of mentioned characters we also saw Jin, Eliza, Leo, Katarina, and Heihachi, making it one of the more diverse Tekken tournaments.

Top 8

After already intense sets, only the best of the best remained for the top 8, making every fight feel like the grand finals. Unexpectedly, ARC continued to dominate well into the top 8, first knocking down Arslan Ash and then Bilal with a 2-0 and 3-0, respectively. Not only that, but ARC did so while playing Miguel, a character who is widely considered to be pretty low tier. 

Arslan, Bilal, and Atif Butt then had a strong run through the loser's bracket, eventually facing off against each other, with Arslan Ash coming out on top.

In the Grand Finals, Arslan got another go at ARC, and this time the results were very different. Sharper than ever, Arslan adapted to ARC's playstyle and started to challenge him with increasingly more confidence and better results. While the first set ended in a tight 3-1, the following reset concluded in a hard 3-0 sweep for Arslan.

And as such, the final placements are:

1. Arslan Ash

2. ARC

3. Bilal

4. Atif Butt

5. Qasim Meer

5. Ahsan Ali

7. Awais Liaqat

7. Dawood Sikandar