This past weekend at NEC 15 the two most exciting Street Fighter 4 players play each other not once,

[Madlib]

So a little backstory first:

Pepeday was very much an unknown player outside of Japan, that is until he [URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLkUB_WTdcI"]won the Tokyo Game Show Tournament[/URL] in extremely impressive fashion beating not only top Japanese players but also Daigo Umehara and 2014 EVO runner up Bonchan. Since TGS he has been to several tournaments outside of Japan due in large part to the subreddit [URL="http://www.reddit.com/r/kappa"]r/Kappa [/URL] which has done donation drives and T-shirt fundraisers to pay his way.

Pepeday's character of choice El Fuerte has always been regarded as a joke character and has been low tier since the beginning of Street Fighter 4. With the release of Ultra Street Fighter 4 El Fuerte has received several buffs, the most important one to his Quesadilla Bomb special move which has transformed it from a rarely used move to one of the most important tools in his arsenal due to its invincibility, range, fast recovery, and anti-air properties. Pepeday's use of all of El Furete's tools is beautiful to watch.

PIE Smug was and still is an online warrior who pretty much only plays Dudley, so much so in fact that he currently owns the top 7 Dudley rankings with 7 different accounts on Xbox Live. Smug starting coming to the New York area weekly tournaments about 18 months ago and has improved at an exponential rate. If Smug doesn't get top 3 at Next Level Battle Circuit (the top NY weekly) it is very much an oddity. As far as his playstyle and why he is so popular I think [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBSJImHvIDs"]this video[/URL] sums it up nicely.

So skipping forward to this weekend Smug and Pepeday were scheduled to play a first to 7 exhibition match Saturday night. This was not the first time they have fought each other, but as you can imagine the excitement level was high.

[video=youtube;IclXoilLLss]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IclXoilLLss[/video]

Moving on to Sunday night, the top 8 of the USF4 tournament, Smug made it to winners finals courtesy of beating [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQQ0xSSYYDM"]Justin Wong[/URL] and Pepeday made it to winners finals as well by [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbREvacJwuI"]beating Snake Eyes[/URL] who is widely considered to be the best overall American player.

[video=youtube;VXdCEQooytg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXdCEQooytg[/video]

Pepeday falls and has to play a runback with [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDr_IVoKDk8"]Snake Eyes in loser's finals[/URL]. Pepday gets mauled 2 games in a row and is down to the last round with a sliver of life left, but makes an amazing comeback winning the round and eventually beating Snake Eyes 3-2 to make it to grand finals.

[video=youtube;S9aY6yTUeWE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9aY6yTUeWE[/video]

Pepeday [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1RivSxc7OM"]takes his shirt off[/URL] before grand finals starts [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSU3xQ7SSq4"]imitating what Poongko did to him at Canada Cup[/URL].

[Shark Bones]

Yo SMUGGLES

[Madlib]

If anyone is interested in this kind of stuff NLBC #100 is this Wednesday. It's going to start around 7pm EST on twitch.tv/teamspooky.

[Captain]

El Fuerte is such a fun character to watch and play when you get him down.

I hope he returns in SF5.

[27X]

Amazing matches.