Daigo Umehara is renowned in the e-sports scene, and regarded as on of the best Street Fighter players in the world. So, it goes without saying that quite a few people were surprised when the rapper Lupe Fiasco managed to take him on in a Street Fighter V contest and win.
Now, Lupe is a huge Street Fighter fan and a self proclaimed hardcore gamer. All the same, there’s a huge difference between someone who plays a lot of Street Fighter and someone who plays professionally as one of the best on the planet (Daigo is known in Japan as “the God of 2D fighting games).
Still, when Daigo and Lupe went head-to-head as part of a Mad Catz hosted e-sports event, Lupe emerged as the victor, winning three out of five matches, causing many who watched the Twitch stream to suggest the fight was staged.
Fans who are familiar with Street Fighter on an e-sports level have also questioned what they saw.
One Reddit user said:
Daigo is such a pro, man. Watching him whiff grabs and DPs just close enough to look legit to the casual observer, but knowing they’d miss, all the hype parry attempts, all of it. Just a perfect performance, go make that money Daigo. Booked better than a year’s worth of Monday Night Raw.
Then again, maybe Fiasco is just really good at Street Fighter, and Daigo underestimated his opponent? You can watch the video below and judge for yourself.
For whatever it’s worth, a Mad Catz rep also told Kotaku that the fight was 100% real – but those catz are mad, so who knows?
Fingers crossed Daigo rallies from this defeat to take on Lupe Fiasco in an intense rap battle.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.