Evo Moment 37: Daigo’s historic Street Fighter comeback vs Justin Wong was 20 years ago

It’s been 20 years since Daigo famously parried Justin Wong at Evo 2004, creating arguably the hypest moment in fighting game history.

It was August 1, 2004, and two of the world’s strongest Street Fighter players were facing off in the Losers Semifinals at the Evolution Championship Series.

Daigo Umehara, Japan’s first-ever esports pro, and Justin Wong, an American Street Fighter savant, went head to head in Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, with Daigo choosing to play as Ken and Wong opting for Chun-Li.

Their famous scuffle went down to the wire in the final round of match 1. Daigo’s health was a mere pixel on the screen, thanks to Justin Wong’s careful playstyle throughout the round. With a mere 26 seconds remaining, Wong went in for the kill with a Super Attack — Chun-Li’s Houyoku-sen, a series of high-powered kicks.

Normally, a Super Attack would deal chip damage, affecting the opponent even if they were to block the hit. In this situation, Daigo could have jumped to avoid the attack… but instead, he chose to parry every single hit.

This high-risk, high-reward decision allowed him to block Wong’s Super without losing any health and gain a valuable comeback, but it was a huge gamble. To parry the attack, Daigo had to essentially predict when Wong would activate his Super and tap his joystick forward within sixty frames of Chun-Li’s animation. That’s one-tenth of a second — something he had to continue to pull off for 14 consecutive hits. Which he did, much to the crowd’s amazement.

After successfully parrying Wong’s Super, Daigo used Chun-Li’s negative frames to his advantage, punishing his opponent with Ken’s own Super Art, taking the match for his own.

Dubbed ‘Evo Moment 37,’ this historic match has remained one of the most hype victories in all of fighting games. 

It’s been just over 20 years since Moment 37 happened, and fighting game fans are celebrating the iconic match on social media. One player even posted a video telling his baby a “bedtime story” about the famous matchup.

Over on Reddit, players are reminiscing about the golden age of fighting games, with one writing: “Likely not even just ‘Street Fighter’ history either… this was basically a historic ‘gaming’ moment as a whole, as someone who wasn’t even there you can feel the energy in that room from just the video.”

Still others are pointing out that Justin Wong’s recent win streak in the newly-released Marvel vs Capcom collection is “punishment” for clowning him about his infamous loss at Evo 2004.

Wong’s skills aren’t limited to Street Fighter titles. He’s also a prolific MvC champ, having taken Evo championship victories for Marvel vs. Capcom 2 in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010. In fact, he’s winning so much with the newly-released collection that players are refunding the game after getting beaten by him in ranked mode.