Capcom Cup 11 concluded with IBSG|Kakeru walking away with the $1,000,000 grand prize this past weekend. Throughout the entire event, Kakeru exclusively used JP even though there were a few doubts about the character’s viability after various nerfs over the course of Season 2 for Street Fighter 6.
Ultimately, nobody ended up using Mai Shiranui in the top 8 bracket as she is the newest playable character in Street Fighter 6. However, it turns out that Kakeru almost pulled out the SNK guest near the end of his run at Capcom Cup 11.
Kakeru recently participated in an interview with Walker Plus following his big win at Capcom Cup 11. Translations have been provided by our very own Nicholas “MajinTenshinhan” Taylor.
“I wanted to use Mai and that’s actually the reason me and my wife were fighting, which I mentioned on stage ha ha…” — Kakeru
“In ranked matches, you’d been using Mai quite a lot,” begun the interviewer. “Was there any chance of you bringing her out at Capcom Cup?”
It turns out that it was Kakeru’s wife that convinced him to stick with JP. After all, there was a lifechanging amount of money waiting for whoever took first place at the big event.
“I wanted to use Mai and that’s actually the reason me and my wife were fighting, which I mentioned on stage ha ha…” responded Kakeru. “In the end, we decided together ‘JP is going to work better,’ so I decided to stick with JP only for the event.”
Of course, this would’ve resulted in Kakeru being the second player to pull out Mai within the top 16 portion of Capcom Cup 11 as KSG|Xiaohai had already made use of her as a secondary during the event. TM|OilKing and Liquid|Nephew also pulled out Mai prior to getting eliminated before they could make it into the top 16.
In the grand finals, Kakeru ended up going against 2G|Blaz, a player that had only dropped sets to Kakeru himself by that point. Much to everyone’s surprise, Blaz was winning all his matches with Ryu despite also being proficient with Ken and Akuma.
Of course, JP is considered to be a particularly challenging match up for Ryu, so this worked quite favorably for Kakeru. Despite Blaz’s momentum, Kakeru was able to able to prevail in the end.
By this point, it’s impossible to know what would’ve happened had Kakeru actually chosen Mai Shiranui. However, since he was able to win with JP, it’s clear that he ended up making the right decision.
Regardless, it sounds like Kakeru might be willing to showcase his Mai Shiranui more in the future. He’ll probably play the character at smaller events before unveiling her at an event with stakes as high as Capcom Cup’s.
