Winning an Evo title in any featured game is like winning the Superbowl for that specific game, which makes Arslan Ash taking home his fourth Tekken 7 trophy at Evo 2023 a historic event that has solidified him as the greatest player to touch the game.
The final bracket wasn’t even that, as he only dropped two games and ended up sweeping the grand finals against AO 3-0 in a dominant Kunimitsu mirror on Aug. 7. This makes for his second Evo win in Las Vegas, adding it to his first win back at Evo 2019 and two straight titles from Evo Japan in 2019 and earlier this year.
He is the first player to ever win four Evo titles in the Tekken franchise as mentioned by former multi-game FGC champ Ryan Hart, which is made even more impressive since he really only started competing in 2018.
Even without counting his wins at Evo Japan, Arslan taking a second title puts him in elite company with the likes of SonicFox, Tokido, and very few others who have ever won multiple titles in the event series. Taking those Evo Japan victories into consideration pushes him even higher into a camp that only other legends like Justin Wong and Daigo have managed to achieve over decades of competition.
This was also a bounce back from Arslan’s third-place finish at Evo 2022, where he felt like splitting his time between King of Fighters XV—a game he placed ninth in—caused his performance in Tekken to suffer. As a result this year, he solely focused on T7 despite training and playing in both Street Fighter 6 and KoFXV earlier in 2023.
“I have been experimenting with Street Fighter, KoF, and many games but now I’m not gonna do the same thing,” Arslan said to Dot Esports. “I think it’s impossible when the competition is so high and everybody’s coming for you. It just feels impossible to focus on multiple games because and because I did that since I got kind of bored from Tekken, I started losing.”
Moving forward, Arslan may dabble in other games to try and learn them and see if they have the potential to give it his all, but he will no longer be splitting his focus at the highest level.
That ultimatum applies to the upcoming release of Tekken 8 as well, with Arslan noting that he is “thinking of playing Tekken again” when the new title does launch. He did also say that if he is focused on another game, he could see himself skipping T8 entirely.
Related: Evo 2023 wrapped: All top 8 results and major announcements
There is also only one real goal on Arslan’s mind for the rest of the year, and that is preparing to make a run at the Tekken World Tour Finals in New Orleans come January 2024. It is the only major tournament he has yet to really stake his claim at on the official TWT circuit, and with this likely being the final he is looking forward to competing in the last year for T7 on the circuit because “I haven’t won that.”
