Tokido And AngryBird Sticking With Ken Over Akuma For Tournaments

Ever since the release of Akuma, the expectation was that top players will start to make the switch to him for tournaments. We saw some players like Shuto and Kawano, pick Akuma at DreamHack Dallas, and MenaRD also played the character until around top 8 where he switched back to Blanka.

However, the most presumably obvious players have not made the switch. For one, many expected former Evo champion, Tokido, to pick Akuma from the bat, but even though he used him extensively on his streams, he used Ken for Battle Arena Melbourne and it seems he will be sticking with the character both for Evo 2024 and Esports World Cup.

This was also followed by Evo 2023 winner, AngryBird, confirming that he will also be sticking with Ken over Akuma. 

This has sparked a conversation about Akuma's place in the tier list, but most notably, it has gotten a lot of people to rethink the claim that Ken is now the weakest shoto and is now mid tier. Popular commentator, Sajam, brought this up with a tweet that got people talking. 

While all the statistics point towards Akuma being strong, it seems the biggest pros are comfortable sticking with Ken. Fellow NASR athlete, Big Bird, also explained the situation stating that both Tokido and AngryBird are somewhat slow learners and switching to Akuma with Evo and the EWC less than two months away is a bad idea. With such little time, Akuma might have less representation from the top percent of the player pyramid in top competitions till later down the line.