Evo Moment 37

• 1. Introduction

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  Evo Moment #37 begins with Daigo Umehara holding on with a single unit of health and 26 seconds left on the clock. He and Justin Wong were facing off at Evolution Championship Series 2004. It was a Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike match that had turned tense long before that point. Wong had built an attack designed to end the match outright in a single blocked hit. What Umehara does in the next few seconds changes the outcome of the match entirely. How does a fighter survive an attack meant to be unbeatable, using split-second reflexes alone? And once that sequence ends, what happens to the two men, and to the community that watched it happen?

• 2. Rival Beginnings

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  California State Polytechnic University, Pomona hosted the Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike finals of Evo 2004 on the 1st of August. Daigo Umehara, known in the community as 'The Beast', and Justin Wong were two of the best Street Fighter players at the time. Yet the two had never faced each other before that day. Despite this, the pair carried a rivalry rooted in how differently they approached the game, one aggressive and one patient.

  Street Fighter was the only title at that Evo still played on original arcade cabinets. Every other game on the schedule ran on home consoles instead. Umehara and Wong ended up meeting in the tournament's loser's finals. There, Umehara chose to play as Ken, while Wong picked Chun-Li.

• 3. The Parry

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  Rolling Stone later described Wong's play that day as 'the antithesis of Umehara's aggressive approach.' Wong spent the final round of match one playing conservatively, chipping steadily at Umehara's life bar after each man had already taken a round. Footage of the match shows this patient approach was clearly 'getting under his Umehara's skin,' in Rolling Stone's account.

  Commentator and Capcom employee Seth Killian called it 'rare footage of Daigo actually angry.' He added, 'Justin's turtle-style now on the verge of putting Daigo down.' Rather than run out the clock, Wong chose to close out the round immediately. At this point, any special attack would end the match if it landed, since special moves cause a bit of chip damage even when blocked.

  To end the round, Wong attempted to land Chun-Li's Super Art II, a move built to strike multiple times in a row. Rather than blocking normally, Umehara chose to Parry, a high-risk technique that cancels an incoming attack without any health loss. It only works if the defender steps toward the attacker within six frames, about 0.1 seconds at 60 frames per second. Umehara had to anticipate the very start of Wong's move, parrying before the attack even began. He then repeated that same split-second timing across all 14 remaining hits without missing once. He pulled it off, then countered Chun-Li's final kick in midair. He launched a 12-hit combo of his own, capped by Ken's Super Art III, to win the match outright.

  GamePro and Eurogamer both noted how the moment was heightened by the crowd's 'euphoric' reaction. The crowd erupted into cheers as Umehara turned the round around. Umehara won that match, but he went on to lose the Grand Final to Kenji 'KO' Obata, who was playing as Yun.

• 4. Capturing the Moment

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  Ben Cureton, one of the tournament's organizers and its primary ring announcer, was asked to assemble a highlight video once Evo 2004 wrapped. He uploaded it under the title 'Evo Moment #37,' choosing an arbitrary two-digit number to stand in for the highlight. In the book Evo Moment #37, author Glenn Cravens explained the reasoning behind the number. 'Obviously, it's the No. 1 highlight, but in picking a number like 37, it would signal to the viewer who wasn't there that there were many incredible moments like the Daigo parry,' he wrote. Cravens added that Cureton 'wanted to make sure people didn't miss out on Evolution 2005 coming next year.'

  A previously unnoticed recording of the match surfaced in 2019. Mark 'MarkMan' Julio, an Evo business developer and Tekken brand and community advisor, found it sitting amid a stack of old tapes and discs. The footage, recorded by a spectator known as Ace R., was shot from a different angle and captured distinct reactions from the crowd. MarkMan posted this version to YouTube in April of that year.

• 5. Saving the Scene

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  Video game commentators keep returning to Evo Moment #37 when naming the most iconic and memorable moment in competitive gaming history. At one point it stood as the most-watched competitive gaming clip of all time. Kotaku compared it to sports moments like Babe Ruth's called shot and the Miracle on Ice.

  In an interview with John Guerrero of EventHubs, Justin Wong said he believed Evo Moment #37 may have helped 'save' the fighting game community. He said the scene was losing steam at the time. Umehara gave a fuller account of the match in his 2016 autobiography, describing how he briefly stepped away from the fighting game community afterward.

• 6. Echoes and Rematches

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  The 3rd Strike Online Edition, a downloadable version of the game, includes a challenge built around pulling off the Daigo Parry. In 2012, the anime Acchi Kocchi featured a parody of Evo Moment #37 in one of its episodes.

  Ten years after the original match, in 2014, Umehara and Wong staged a rematch to mark the anniversary. Wong again tried to chip Umehara down with Chun-Li's special move, and Umehara parried it a second time. This time, though, Wong had enough vitality left to win the round moments later. That same year, Glenn Cravens self-published his book on the moment, titled EVO Moment 37.

  By 2016, the clip had been viewed more than 30 million times, making it one of the most-watched tournament highlights ever recorded. In a friendly match that year, British player Ryan Hart pulled off Daigo's parry without even looking at the screen.

  Ken appeared as a playable character in 2018's Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, with the Shippu Jinraikyaku listed among his Final Smash moves. His reveal trailer nodded to the original moment, showing Ken parry an attack from Punch-Out!!'s Little Mac before finishing with that same Final Smash.

  Twenty years on, in 2024, organizers confirmed a 3rd Strike tournament for that year's Evo. A promotional skit featured Wong at a Chipotle Mexican Grill, asking Umehara over the phone whether he wanted extra guacamole. Umehara replied that he could 'handle something with a little more kick.' The joke cued a clip of the original parry, and an unamused Wong hung up and walked out. During the tournament itself, a player called 'Hayao,' fighting as Hugo, found himself down to his last pixel of health against Franklin 'FrankieBFG' Nunez's Ken. Hayao parried Ken's multi-hitting Tatsumaki Senpukyaku in midair, then used Hugo's dropkick to dodge the following Shippuu Jinraikyaku, opening a window to win the match. Some commentators nicknamed the moment 'Evo Moment #38.'