The inaugural season for Street Fighter V in ELEAGUE has been more or less a success. Solid average ratings, interesting story lines and most importantly highly entertaining games that have led to an attention grabbing product on television.

ELEAGUE’s production values and entertainment quality have done wonders for the fighting game community in establishing a main stream audience. The shiny studio, hype crowds and professionalism displayed by the casters adds a legitimacy to it all. On top of the diehard fans watching, plenty of 18-49 year-olds have been tuning in to catch their favorite fighting game.

Additionally, the competition is fierce with names like Du “NuckleDu” Dang and Kun “Xian” Xian Ho both failing to make it to the playoffs. New and old names have emerged and each player in the playoffs has an actual shot of taking home the title.

The Favorite: Panda Global Punk

Victor “Punk” Woodley is on a mission from the heavens in 2017. He’s becoming a robot with the urge to kill. He’s separated himself as the best player in this current era and winning ELEAGUE would put a stamp on that.

However, his first matchup is against the dangerous Eduardo “PR_Balrog” Perez, but Punk does have a good number of strong Balrog’s in his region so he could be more prepared for that set specifically. If the last few months are any indication, Punk’s Karin will be hard to slow down.

The Underdog: BX3| Phenom

Interestingly enough, Arman “Phenom” Hanjanni always slides under the radar. He finished second in his group and then battled his way to a win over Zhoujun “Xiao Hai” Zeng, in a convincing 3-0, to win the group that featured NucleDu.

Necali, in my eyes, is still being slept on overall and Phenom has optimized his style from season one to season two. Starting in winners against an R. Mika player seems to work in his favor. If he can get that first win over Keita “Fuudo” Ai, watch out, because he can surprise some people.

The sleeper: Daigo Umehara

It’s even crazy to think Daigo actually made it to this point. After a lackluster group stage where he barely advanced through, he made a sudden a drastic change to Guile and once again squeaked past in the bracket stage.

Now it’s been three weeks, he’s had a lot of time to prepare with his new characters and make adjustments. He faces a familiar foe in the first round and could use Guile’s strengths to combat Yusuke “Momochi” Momochi’s Ken.

In turn, Daigo’s recent resurgence with a new character has seemingly given him more confidence. A focused and confident Daigo Umehara could be a different beast all together and now he’s playing with more matchup knowledge.

Bottom Feeder: Qanba Douyu Xiao Hai

No disrespect to Xiao Hai, but he’s not looking like the same player from season one. He did have a clutch win over NuckleDu and had grind out win over Chris “ChrisT” Tartarian, but he’s struggled in many instances this year.

Notably, he’s not having the same tournament success with Cammy despite her upgrades in season two. However, he showed his potential to make it this far and anything is possible, especially with a player like Xiao Hai.

In the end, there’s a chance any of these eight players make a deep run. The beauty of this league was its player depth and that’s being displayed this weekend. Someone is going home with a life changing win and will be remembered forever for winning ELEAGUE.

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