Just Stop Oil protesters take over Street Fighter 6 tournament & “throw paint on main screen”

Just Stop Oil protesters interrupted a Street Fighter 6 tournament during Grand Finals, splashing paint all over players’ monitors and delaying the competition.

The 2023 Capcom Pro Tour is well underway, pitting the globe’s best Street Fighter 6 pros against one another in a high-stakes, worldwide competition.

The CPT’s third Offline Premier event took place from November 3-5 in Paris, France, as part of Paris Games Week.

During the tournament’s Grand Final, which saw two-time Capcom Cup champ ‘MenaRD’ face off against Hong Kong pro ‘Chris Wong’ in a nail-biting fight to the finish, something happened that totally upended the competition.

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The 2023 Capcom Pro Tour held its third and final Offline Premier in Paris, France – but the Grand Finals were interrupted in a huge way.

Just Stop Oil protesters storm Street Fighter 6 tournament

At the very beginning of the Grand Final, a group of unknown people ran up on stage and appeared to smear something all over the two players’ monitors.

Both MenaRD and Chris Wong quickly got up from their setups and left the stage — leaving attendees, competitors, and even the commentators quite confused.

“What has happened?” commentator ‘Jammerz’ asked as he watched the scene unfold. “I would love to know.”

Luckily, fellow commentator ‘FWord’ was able to keep the conversation flowing despite the drama, and later revealed exactly what went down at the tournament in a short video on Twitter/X.

According to FWord, protestors supposedly representing Just Stop Oil – a “nonviolent civil resistance group” protesting the UK’s use of oil and gas – had “stormed the main stage and thrown paint all over the main screen.”

The tournament had to take a quick break to clean things up but was able to resume the competition after a short intermission. FWord updated fans on the situation with a short statement after the break.

“Everyone’s safe, no one has been harmed,” he stated. “An incident occurred, and the team has handled it swiftly and quickly.”

As a result of the interruption, the fighters had to start over from square one. Ultimately, Chris Wong took home the Premier victory, leaving MenaRD — the man who won Capcom Cup 2022 — to qualify for Capcom Cup 2023 in the remaining Online Premiers left throughout the season, or perhaps the Last-Chance Qualifier in February.

This isn’t the first time this has happened at a fighting game tournament, either. An almost identical incident took place during a Tekken 7 tournament in October, which saw Just Stop Oil protestors halt the match and smear paint on players’ screens, as well.