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iDom comes from behind to win Capcom Cup 2019

Capcom Cup 2019 came to a thrilling end, as iDom came back from the brink of defeat to win the Street Fighter championship.

Ozzie Mejia

December 15, 2019 5:12 PM

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The atmosphere felt a little different for this year's Street Fighter championship. In a rare instance, the Grand Finals came down to two American players. In the end, it was Derek "iDom" Ruffin who came back from the brink of defeat, resetting the bracket on Victor "Punk" Woodley and proceeding to take the second Grand Finals set 3-1.

Punk had some close calls throughout the tournament, but had managed to achieve victory with Karin. But his closest call came against iDom, who came back from down 2-0 in the first Grand Finals set and looked to have him on the ropes. iDom frequently forced Punk to go to his V-Reversal, reading his movements and catching him with Laura's command grabs. Punk couldn't escape Laura's Thunder Clap move, constantly getting caught by its slow movement. The second game continued to go iDom's way, as he quickly polished off Punk with more command grabs. The third game looked to be academic, as iDom started with a Perfect, but Punk managed to stay alive in Round 2 by maintaining his distance with medium kicks. Punk started to regain his composure, as he took the first game of the second Grand Finals set with Karin's Critical Art.

Hoping to catch Punk off-guard, iDom made the switch to Poison. Punk was able to adapt quickly, using a V-Reversal to close in on Poison and put her in the corner. But it was Poison's V-Trigger that was enough to put iDom over the top, allowing him one final combo to clinch the tournament.

Punk changed things up to start the Grand Finals, opting to switch to Cammy to try and counter iDom's Laura. Punk went up 2-0 with little trouble, but iDom showed some life in the third set, managing to adapt to Punk's Cammy to the point that he could take his first game. Sensing that iDom had caught on, Punk switched back to Karin in hopes to putting the tournament to bed. However, iDom continued to fight back, frequently interrupting Punk's combos and taking the second game with a command grab and cross-up.

Punk went straight back in for a rematch and looked to have Round 1 in hand, but Laura strung together a pair of command grabs off V-Trigger I and quickly stunned Karin to let iDom take the round. The same thing happened in Round 2, as Punk dropped some critical combos. iDom took advantage and took the game to reset the bracket.

Even in defeat, Punk made history this weekend by being the first #1 seed in Capcom Pro Tour history to make it to the Capcom Cup Grand Finals. Previous Capcom Cups have not been kind to top seeds, with all of them falling early. One of them, in fact, was Punk, who opened the 2017 Capcom Cup by losing to Last Chance Qualifier winner Naoki "Nemo" Nemoto.

For his Capcom Cup victory, iDom goes home with $120,000. Runner-up Punk leaves with $50,000.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?