THE PRODIGY: A LOOK AT ARSLAN ASH’S JOURNEY
A young boy, nervous, crying, and running out of time, fighting travelling woes and hunger pangs, reached the destination just minutes before the polls. Arslan ‘’Ash’’ Siddique became the world champion at Evo Japan 2019, world’s top fighting competition, beating the gods of the gaming world.
Arslan ‘’Ash’’ Siddique appeared at the world stage back in 2019 when he entered the EVO world championship as an unknown underdog from the non gaming nation, Pakistan.
At first, he was overlooked by the streamers and other well known players at the competition. No one has ever thought a guy from an unknown background with no history or glory would come up as the world champion.
Arslan Ash beat the veteran player, Alexandre ‘’AK’’ Leverene from Phillipines in the final.
Arslan ‘’Ash’’ Siddique, first ever South-Asian champion, came from the streets of Lahore, Pakistan. Arslan have always been a brilliant student and great athelete as he said,
“I was topper of my class. I used to had competition with one of my class fellows, Waqas Mughal. I was very keen of sports as well I was the opening batter of my school’s team. I used to play football.”
While telling about his journey to esports Arslan Ash mentioned that he used to play Tekken 3 at a local gaming shop in front of his home. He was very keen and used to play challenge matches with his localhood friends. Gradually, he started taking challenges at different places of Lahore, getting better and better.
Arslan reached the world stage in 2018 at OU Games, Oman where he beat the ‘GOAT’ Bae ‘’Knee’’ Jei-Min in the final. Organizers of the tournament were already fans of Arslan Ash and asked him to join their team ‘’vSlash’’.
Since then,the world has become fan of Arslan ‘’Ash’’ Siddique. Arslan won the EVO Japan 2019. It was a rapid rise from anonymity to stardom that began days earlier in Japan when Siddique was stranded at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, pleading with the clerk at a sandwich shop to accept his Pakistani rupees.
It was the tail end of a wearying journey; he flew from Pakistan to Malaysia to Tokyo before a final flight to Fukuoka for the tournament. The journey was made harder when Siddique, still new to international travel, ran into visa issues that stranded him at Haneda. He was forced to remain in the terminal for a full day while his team raced to rebook him on a different flight. To make matters worse, the currency exchange machine wasn’t able to convert his money into yen.
“I couldn’t bear my hunger. I went to the shop and I said, ‘Please, please take my rupees and give me some food.’ They said, ‘Sorry, we can’t do that,’ ” Siddique said. “I relied only on drinking water. For two days, I didn’t eat.”
From embarking in Pakistan to his arrival at the tournament, Siddique said he spent three days in transit. Eventually he got his paperwork in order, allowing him to leave his airport limbo and make his star turn.
Winning evo would make anyone in fighting community a star in a night. Later that year, in August, Arslan ‘’Ash’’ traveled to Las Vegas to defend his title in American version of Evo, a bigger event than Evo Japan. Arslan played final against his Korean arch-rival, Bae ‘’Knee’’ Jei-Min. The finale was ended in mere five rounds and the upstart had prevailed again and solidified his spot among the fighting game community’s elite. And the guy who wasn’t able to buy food at that airport in Japan was $13,575 richer.
Arslan has won multiple championships and considered to be the second best player of Tekken on the planet. Tekken is, usually, dominated by Korean and Japanese player and seeing Arslan’s name among them makes every Pakistani fan proud.
