EVO 2015 Winner Triumphs Despite Broken Stick

Momochi is your 2015 Street Fighter IV champ at EVO, and he took out the title in some of the weirdest circumstances ever seen at the tournament.

Taking on crowd-favourite Gamerbee (who had been on a hell of a run during the day) in the Grand Final, everything was going fine until Momochi’s stick broke. Like, of all the times in a fighting game stick’s lifetime to break, it had to be in the middle of the freakin’ Grand Final at EVO? Amazing.

The malfunction took place in the middle of a round, and perhaps even more amazing than the breakdown itself was Gamerbee’s sportsmanship about the whole thing (go to 1:49 in the video below).

Sadly, that sportsmanship wasn’t to be rewarded; despite the setback, and pause in proceedings that had to have wreaked havoc with both combatant’s state of mind, Momochi returned with a replacement stick to take out the GF and emerge as this year’s champion.

Funnily enough, one of the prizes the finalists took home from the tournament was a gold stick. Handy for Momochi!

You can watch it below:

And if you’re interested, here are EVO’s rules on stick failure:

Reporting Equipment Failure: Video game hardware has a tendency to break down during tournaments. Buttons or joysticks will occasionally break down in the middle of a match, leaving the player on the broken side at a significant disadvantage. The following rules will be used in the event of a breakdown:

In the event of an equipment failure, they player has the option to stop the Game in progress to obtain an replacement.

If a Game is stopped in progress, the reporting player must forfeit the current round.

New equipment must be immediately available. If replacement equipment cannot be obtained in a timely manner, the player must continue to play on their current equipment or forfeit the Match

Once replacement equipment is obtained, the player is given the rest of the round to configure their buttons and test the new equipment. If the player gains an undue advantage by doing so (e.g. charging an abundance of super meter), they must forfeit the Game.

A player may opt to switch out equipment between Games at no penalty. When this occurs, the player will be given ample time to configure his buttons before the next Game begins.