The 2018 Evolution Championship Series, better known as Evo 2018, went down this weekend, pitting the best of the fighting game community against one another in mano a mano combat across eight games: Street Fighter 5, Tekken 7, Guilty Gear Xrd REV 2, Injustice 2, Super Mash Bros. Melee, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, Dragon Ball FighterZ, and BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle. When the dust cleared, this is who was left standing:
Street Fighter 5: Arcade Edition
- 1st - Problem X - Benjamin Simon
- 2nd - Tokido - Hajime Taniguchi
- 3rd - Fuudo - Kenta Ai
- 4th - Gachikun - Kanamori Tsunehiro
- 5th - Fujimura - Fujimura Atsushi
- 5th - Luffy - Olivier Hay
- 7th - THE COOL KID93 - Marcus Redmond
- 7th - Caba - Cristhopher Rodriguez Nade
Street Fighter's grand finals were once again the capstone event, and last year's champion, Japanese veteran Tokido, nearly took the title again. Another Japanese veteran, Fuudo, sent Tokido to the loser's bracket, but Tokido battled his way back and made it to the grand final, where he reset the bracket in a real nail biter. But Problem X's M. Bison was too strong, and he became the first UK Street Fighter Evo champion.
Dragon Ball FighterZ
- 1st - SonicFox - Dominique McLean
- 2nd - GO1 - Goichi Kishida
- 3rd - Fenritti - Shoji Sho
- 4th - Moke - Naoki Nakayama
- 5th - KnowKami - Perry Vinson
- 5th - Kazunoko - Ryota Inoue
- 7th - Kubo - Tsutomu Kubota
- 7th - Supernoon - Steve Carbajal
DBFZ set a viewership record for EVO and provided a slightly controversial, dramatic finish, as SonicFox asked to switch from P2 to P1 between matches. Some called it a delaying tactic to put the red-hot Goichi off his game, and SonicFox did turn things around to win in a dominant pair of final rounds.
Tekken 7
- 1st - LowHigh - Sun-woong Yoon
- 2nd - Qudans - Byung-moon Son
- 3rd - Lil Majin - Terrelle Jackson
- 4th - JDCR - HyunJin Kim
- 5th - Book - Nopparut Hempamorn
- 5th - Rangchu - Hyunho Jung
- 7th - Noroma - Takumi Hamasaki
- 7th - Chirichiri - Takumi Hamasaki
Super Smash Bros. Melee
- 1st - Leffen - William Hjelte
- 2nd - Armada - Adam Lindgren
- 3rd - Plup - Justin McGrath
- 4th - Hungrybox - Juan DeBiedma
- 5th - Wizzrobe - Justin Hallett
- 5th - Mang0 - Joseph Marquez
- 7th - Swedish Delight - James Liu
- 7th - S2J - Johnny Kim
Guilty Gear Xrd REV 2
- 1st - Omito - Omito Hashimoto
- 2nd - Machabo - Masahiro Tominaga
- 3rd - LostSoul - Eli Rabadad
- 4th - Nage
- 5th - Rion - Hisatoshi Usui
- 5th - Zadi
- 7th - Teresa - Fukuda Norihiro
- 7th - Fumo - Harukuni Suga
BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle
- 1st - Heiho
- 2nd - Fame96 - Jerome Latham
- 3rd - DoraBang - Ryuji Utsumi
- 4th - kojiKOG - Kazuyuki Koji
- 5th - Kazunoko - Ryota Inoue
- 5th - Fenritti - Shoji Sho
- 7th - Gouda
- 7th - DettyWhiteRock - Kohki Hayashi
Injustice 2
- 1st - Rewind - Curtis McCall
- 2nd - Tweedy - Tommy Tweedy
- 3rd - SonicFox - Dominique McLean
- 4th - Big D - Ryan DeDomenico
- 5th - Hayatei - Alexandre Dube-Bilodeau
- 5th - Semiij - Andrew Fontanez
- 7th - SylverRye - Mo Amaechi
- 7th - Biohazard - Matthews Commandeur
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U
- 1st - Lima - Bharat Chintapall
- 2nd - CaptainZack - Zack Lauth
- 3rd - Nietono - Yuta Uejima
- 4th - Mistake - Tamim Omary
- 5th - Mr E - Eric Weber
- 5th - MVD - Jestise Negron
- 7th - Raito - Tetsuya Ishiguro
- 7th - Choco - Toshimasa Hayakawa
Street Fighter 5 action put up big numbers on the opening days of the tournament, according to this GitHyp report, but Dragon Ball FighterZ ultimately took the viewership crown, hitting nearly 258,000 concurrent viewers at one point, the highest viewership count of all time for an Evo main event on Twitch.
And like all good sporting events, there was a spot of controversy as well. Kotaku reported that the audience booed players who opted to use the Bayonetta character in the Super Smash Bros. for Wii U competition because it's viewed by many as having an unfair advantage over others. It got bad enough that a pre-finals match between CaptainZack and eventual 7th-place finisher Raito ended with a victorious CaptainZack flipping off the entire crowd as he walked off the stage; the announcers said they didn't condone his action, but acknowledged that the behavior of the audience was in "such bad taste" that it wasn't entirely unjustified. In the final match, Lima and CaptainZack, who were both playing with Bayonetta, simply stopped playing at one point, until Evo staff compelled them to keep fighting.