You certainly could make a case for MenaRD being the best Street Fighter 6 player in the world right now. His win at Sunday’s Evolution Championship Series in Las Vegas brings him up to four total Evo wins, with two back-to-back wins at Evo in Las Vegas (2025-2026) and two back-to-back wins at Evo Japan (2024-2025). And while his Blanka looked dominant throughout the tournament, one of the more interesting stories that came out of the Street Fighter 6 top eight was the fact that in his most crucial matches, Mena opted against using the character that he’s most well known for.
In Winners Semis, Mena started off by using M. Bison, going 2-2 with Shigematsu’s Blanka. After swapping to Blanka for the mirror match in the deciding game, Mena won a hard fought game that ended up going to the final round, sending Shigematsu down to the losers bracket.
Shigematsu wouldn’t be denied his runback however, as he ended up fighting his way through Dogura, Craime, and Kilzyou to reach Grand Finals for what we all assumed would be a Blanka vs Blanka mirror match, right from the start. But once again, Mena opted for the Bison, and played out the whole first set with the character. Shigematsu ended up resetting the bracket against Mena’s Bison with a score of three games to one, and sure enough, after the reset Mena finally decided to bring out the Blanka. It was short work from there as Mena took next set 3-0, winning his fourth Evo Championship.
But why did he decide to choose Bison in the first place? After the match, Mena responded to the question by saying, “Honestly, it was a matter of Shigematsu [being] a teammate with another top Blanka player from Japan called Takagi. So I took that into account and I had confidence in my Bison after practice. And my Bison actually produced better results against the Blanka players that I practiced with. But I also had the suspicion that his style was a little bit different. A little more aggressive, and had a lot of tricks.”
After the close call in Winner’s Semi’s, Mena still felt like he could have won with Bison, and since he was on the winner’s side of Grand Finals, he could risk losing a set, so he decided to try it again. But after Shigematsu took the first set off him, he realized that he had to switch to his bread and butter.
Mena credits his training in Japan as being very helpful in his improvement as a player. “I’m staying in Japan right now. I’m playing in the Street Fighter League. My teammates in the Zeta Division: Momochi, Higuchi, and Yamaguchi, they’re all amazing players and I see them every day.”
Mitchell Saltzman is an editorial producer at IGN. You can find him on twitter @JurassicRabbit
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