Given that it’s getting toward the end of summer, Seattle goes all out around Labor Day for outdoor activities. Concerts! Paddle raves! Bumbershoot! With all these fresh-air festivities, you likely missed what was going on inside: the largest Tekken 8 tournament ever held on the West Coast.
For those unaware, Tekken 8 is the latest version of a popular fighting video game from 1995. With its then-impressive 3D visuals and insane characters, like Yoshimitsu (a demonic samurai) and Kuma (just an actual grizzly bear on its hind legs), Tekken became one of the first titles to bring people together for competitive gaming. The fighting game community has been thriving for decades, long before League of Legends and DOTA 2 redefined it all for the mainstream as “e-sports.”
Today, in 2025, Tekken is no longer as popular as it used to be. Yet on the last day of PAX West, a gaming festival, it was the main event, the finale of the “Almost Pro” championship. Twenty-four players, who had spent the weekend surviving a gauntlet of increasingly difficult challengers, were now gunning for a championship belt and their share of $10,000!
To avoid elimination, each player has to win three rounds in a series of high-intensity battles. If you can look past the cyborgs and laser swords, Tekken ends up feeling a lot like boxing. Each player has to make constant, split-second decisions on when to attack and when to defend themselves. Button mashing won’t work here. If you fight carelessly, you’ll be quickly sent home.
“Seconds is the name of the game,” said ZiggyZensei, who is both a player and coach for the competitive gaming group LongStyle. “We play around frames, and it is lightning quick. You need to have your own kind of rhythm, setting your own pace. If you’re comfortable, it’s good. If you’re uncomfortable, then you need to get comfortable.”
Not everyone manages to settle in. Unlucky combatants are knocked off the stage one game at a time, and eventually, only four players would remain: Hidetone, a Tekken YouTuber; Jaboikyran, the defending champion from Seattle; Dr. theJAKEMAN, a wildcard from SoCal who plays as the wrestler King; and Shaundude who, ironically for his name, plays as the feminine heiress Lili de Rochefort.
Lili’s flips, kicks, and tricks, despite her gracefulness, couldn’t protect Shaundude from being backed into a corner by Jaboikyran’s sharp eye. Playing as Steve Fox, a British boxer with a mean fist, Jaboikyran would catch Shaundude by surprise with an unexpected uppercut or nasty left hook, inspiring his supportive LongStyle friends to leap out of their chairs to celebrate their guy! Through sheer reflexes and brute force, the champ made his way to the final round.
Meanwhile, Dr. theJAKEMAN had been playing the long game, working his way up through the losers’ bracket until he’s suddenly a serious contender. In his big match against Hidetone, he bided his time, patiently blocking blows until he suddenly leaped into action, pulling his opponent into an explosive suplex, or even throwing him through a window. Failing to slow down the doctor, Hidetone was eliminated.
Which brings us to the grand finale: Jaboikyran vs. Dr. theJAKEMAN. The Seattleite versus the Californian. In what ended up being a one-sided turn of events, the doctor cleanly swept the first round, then a second, then a third, then a FOURTH!
TheJAKEMAN’s attacks were relentless, never giving Jaboikyran a moment to breathe, and until match point, it seemed like his victory was unstoppable. Yet slowly but surely, Jaboikyran began shifting the momentum of the battle. He started to read the doctor’s moves like an open book. He was side-stepping kicks and escaping grapples that had worked on him before, and he began landing blows he had previously missed. In what felt like the blink of an eye, the game was tied.
One round was left to determine it all. The tension had the audience on their feet. Recognizing the severity of the match, both contestants played more defensively. Every sudden trading of blows now elicited gasps from the captivated crowd. In the final moment of play, Jaboikyran perfectly ducked away from a hook and uppercut theJAKEMAN in the jaw, leaving him defenseless against an onslaught he never recovered from. Jaboikyran won the game, three rounds to two. For the second year in a row, the belt was his.
Jaboikyran’s victory at PAX, admittedly, is far from the biggest achievement in the sport. Tekken has been played at EVO, the Super Bowl of fighting tournaments, based in Las Vegas, for nearly 25 years. Still, any player on that stage could tell you that what made this tournament special wasn’t its size and scope. It was its closeness to home. Something your closest friends could afford to come see you perform in.
“It’s like a big family to me, honestly,” said Hidetone. “Just being in a community where people love to compete, and just talk about the game as much as I do, is a huge pleasure.”
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