There were lots of reasons for a young Bae "Knee" Jae-Min to doubt the value of the time he spent honing his Tekken skills in South Korea's arcades. Successful men of his age were supposed to be focusing on school and building their careers, not optimizing damage from Bryan Fury's middle finger taunt. Even if he was right to focus on gaming, had he chosen the wrong game? StarCraft, not Tekken, was the biggest game in South Korea, and the one with the biggest prize pools. And within the FGC, Street Fighter was the more popular game with the more lucrative tournament scene.

Knee quickly figured out he had a knack for fighting games, playing games like King of Fighters and Samurai Showdown at South Korean arcades. "One day, when I was a teenager, I was playing Tekken with a man, sitting side by side at a game room in the neighborhood," Knee told the Korea Herald. "I beat him again and again until the guy kind of got worked up and chewed me out. Guess I played too smart."

He eventually directed his focus towards Tekken, one of the only games that remained well stocked after financial issues forced many Japanese companies to stop shipping their products to Korea. Knee had been competing in tournaments since 2004 and the Tekken 4 days. He placed third at his very first tournament. "When people first congratulated me, it made me want to be better, and even the best, at the game," he told theScore Esports. He would swiftly evolve into one of South Korea's greatest Tekken players.

He dominated the Tekken 5 tournaments held at South Korea's legendary Green Arcade. But after three years of training and winning, and watching StarCraft prize pools only surge while Tekken's stayed stagnant, Knee wasn't sure he was making the right choices for his future. After claiming victory at one last tournament at Green Arcade, Knee ended this chapter of his life on a high note and began his two years of mandatory South Korean military service.

The plan from here was to follow the more standard life path: go to school, get a job, turn it into a career. "Everyone around me was getting a job, but I was lost because I had been playing Tekken for my whole life," Knee told the Korea Herald. "It was really stressful when my relatives asked about my future. I even thought that I was living my life wrong."

But that wasn't the path for him. Despite consistent struggles with money, Knee kept at Tekken competition after returning from military service. He was a fixture of televised Tekken competitions, leading his team to victory at Tekken Crash Season 4. In 2010, on an even bigger stage at WCG 2010, sharing the venue with a massive StarCraft tournament, Knee claimed victory over top players from Spain and Japan en route to a first place finish. Few events had shined a brighter spotlight on Korea's Tekken scene, and there was Knee at the top, just as he was before his military service.

He kept grinding, and the results kept coming. He took first place over a bevy of international competition at the Esports World Cup 2012 in Paris, and the next year, he would attend his first Evo in Las Vegas. He had enjoyed some big wins at tournaments featuring stiff international competition, but his name wasn't nearly as well known outside of Korea. His performance at Evo 2013 would change that forever.

Using the combo of Lars and Devil Jin in the Tekken Tag Tournament 2 bracket, Knee tore through the competition. He dropped the first game of the best-of-three Winners Semis to his countryman and teammate Nin, and then he locked in. Knee won six of the last seven rounds to punch his ticket to Winners Finals, and won six of seven rounds again to take out Stringbean and advance to Grand Finals. Bronson Tran was able to break Knee's five-game winning streak in Grands, but Knee figured him out in an instant, taking six straight rounds to end the tournament with a 3-1 victory.

As undeniable as Knee's talent was, the money still wasn't enough for him to call Tekken a real career, at least not yet. His Evo 2013 win earned him the recognition of Tekken players worldwide, but the $1,278 grand prize wasn't exactly the seed money for a retirement fund. Soon after, though, at the urging of his friend and fellow Korean Tekken competitor Chanel, he started streaming, first on AfreecaTV and later on YouTube as well. This turned out to be the huge break he needed to turn all the time he had dedicated to Tekken into a career.

It was slow at first. Knee built up his audience and stream as he continued to excel in Tekken competitions. He remained strong as the main Tekken game shifted from Tag 2 to 2015's Tekken 7. He placed second in the first official World Tour finals, The King of the Iron Fist Tournament 2015, and would remain a fixture in top-level final brackets. He placed 2nd and 3rd at Tekken 7's first appearances at Evo Las Vegas in 2016 and 2017 respectively. He was clearly one of the world's best Tekken 7 players. But as 2018 approached, he was still missing a trophy like the one he had earned for Tekken Tag Tournament 2 at Evo 2013.

2018 would be the year of Knee, one of the most dominant seasons of fighting gaming we've ever seen, or ever will see. According to Liquipedia, Knee entered 13 major tournaments in 2018. His results? One third place finish. Three second place finishes. And an insane eight wins, including at least one on four different continents. He won Battle Arena Melbourne in Australia, DamagermanY in Germany, COMBO BREAKER in the United States, and, among others, Evo Japan.

Knee had officially made it, and not just thanks to his wins. The over $30,000 in prizes he won in 2018 were nice, no doubt, but his stream had also exploded, breaking the 15,000 viewer mark at times. "In 2015, I earned $10,000," Knee told the Korea Herald. "In 18 months from June 2017 to December 2018, my revenue from AfreecaTV donations and YouTube proceedings were a little more than $100,000 combined." (Korea Herald)

Knee became one of the defining players of the Tekken 7 era, thanks both to his own success and his electrifying rivalry with Tekken 7's newest and biggest star, Arslan Ash. Arslan was one of the few players able to defeat Knee during his incredible 2018 season, and their matches became appointment viewing as they both consistently vied for top spots at tournaments across the world.

If it wasn't for Arslan, Knee looked primed to stay on top of the Tekken world. Knee added more major trophies to his collection in 2019, winning COMBO Breaker and CEO, as well as VSFighting and the World Showcase of Esports. But Arslan denied Knee a third Evo championship and a second Tekken 7 Evo crown in Grand Finals at Evo Vegas 2019. That win put Arslan up 4-0 in the lifetime matchup, and Knee was the one who had to catch up for the first time in a long time.

He went to Arslan, and trained with him in Pakistan prior to the 2019 Tekken World Tour Finals. Naturally, the tournament draw put the two training partners together in the group stages, forcing Knee to put his new knowledge to the test right away.

Knee was sitting at 2-1 in the round robin group stage and needed just one game win to guarantee his spot in Top 8. But Arslan came out swinging, and took the first game three rounds to one. Knee stuck with Paul rather than switching to the Steve or Devil Jin he had used for much of the season. The decision paid off, as Knee won Game 2 in three consecutive rounds to punch his ticket to Top 8 before finally finishing off a full set win over his rival, 2-1. Knee would eventually bow out at third for the second straight time at the Tekken World Tour Finals.

When offline competition returned in 2022, Knee picked up right where he left off. Nine years after his first Evo Vegas championship, Knee took the title again in Tekken 7's final year on Evo's main stage, becoming the first Tekken player with three Evo championships. He would remain a force to be reckoned with for the rest of Tekken 7's lifespan, a threat to win any major tournament he entered.

The young man who once worried that he had spent too much of his time on too niche of a game has built up quite a life for himself through Tekken. His stream continues to pop, and even though he's still awaiting his first major Tekken 8 bracket win, he's consistently going deep into brackets and will always be one of the most feared names in Tekken.

Knee may have reached the peak, but he has no intent of leaving the Tekken scene anytime soon. He says he wants to become the oldest active esports player in history one day. "I think that people who play a lot of games can't really move away from this space," Knee told Inven Global in 2022. "I think I'll probably end up staying in esports one way or another. For me, since I made it this far playing fighting games, I'll work towards making fighting games more mainstream."

Knee would be a legend if he hung up the sticks tomorrow and decided he'd never touch a Tekken game again. But Knee's life has made it clear: all roads eventually lead back to Tekken. As long as there's more Tekken to be played, Knee will be there, and if the past 20 years are any indication, he'll probably be winning.

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