So THAT'S why we havent' been seeing him at the awards ceremonies...

A community member by the name of Thegametwok has developed a very useful CPT match up index that can be used to search for specific character and player stats.

The creator of this index has shown off an intriguing example of what it's capable of by tracking the stats for Ryu as he's appeared in top eight Capcom Pro Tour matches. The findings: Street Fighter's poster boy has an impressive streak of not taking down any wins at all in final tournament brackets. In fact, he hasn't won in this particular arena since the 2016 North American Regional Finals.

We don't necessarily expect Ryu to be exceedingly popular, but it's not out of line to say that you do want the most recognizable face in Street Fighter to make some endearing appearances on bigger competitive stages, especially here in the age of eSports.

The discussion about the Tireless Wanderer's relative weakness in the competitive realm of Street Fighter 5 has been ongoing ever since he fell from the game's higher tiers thanks to the nerfs developers gave him in the transition between seasons one and two.

There was a mass exodus of professional Ryu players as competitors like CYG|Daigo and Rhoto|Tokido left for characters that could more efficiently get the job done. Though Capcom has given Ryu a few buffs over the years (likely as a result of the community continually expressing distaste at his low strength) he's still failing to get much done even here in 2019.

Even recently we saw Justin Wong reevaluate Ryu's strengths in Season 4 only to sadly conclude that "he's in the bottom five." This was a bit demoralizing to see considering the emerging prospect that perhaps the barefoot brawler had made a few strides toward the top.

Of course, Ryu's highly recognizable face has continued to keep him popular amongst the more casual realm of players. He's almost always the most-used fighter in Capcom's monthly CFN character usage report.

Check out Thegametwok's tweet by clicking the thumbnail below. Then head over to the Play Index to hammer out some of your own interesting searches. Should you find anything of note, please feel free to share it with us here in the comments of this story.



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