Yusuke Momochi lived too far out in Japan's countryside to spend his early childhood at the arcades, but video games were always a big part of his life. The original Super Mario Bros. is one of his very first conscious memories. "It's like I was born, and then bam, it's Mario," Momochi told Manekai in a 2019 interview. But soon, he would get his chance to try out Japan's arcades, and he would play the game that would put his life on the path it's still on today: The King of Fighters '96.
Momochi didn't just love the game, he loved winning. "I really loved when I was playing and I beat middle school kids or high school kids on the other end of the machine," He told Manekai. "I just couldn’t get enough of it." He quickly learned one of the most important lessons in fighting games: if your opponent can't handle something, keep doing it. Which, in turn, taught him another important life lesson: "There was a case where someone threw a chair at me from the other side of the arcade after I kept doing infinite combos."
He wasn't deterred, and kept up the grind, growing from a force at his small-town local arcade in the late 90s into one of Japan's strongest Street Fighter III: Third Strike players by the end of the next decade. Momochi's tournament career began in 2007, and within three years, he had claimed the championship at Japan's premier team tournament, Super Battle Opera, not just once but twice, and in two separate games. He took the Third Strike crown in 2009, teaming with Rikimaru and BOSS, and the Street Fighter IV crown in 2010, teaming with Kindevu and RF.
Over the next four years, Momochi would dedicate himself to Street Fighter IV and become a standby in major Top 8s. His skill was unquestionable, as he established himself as one of the best players not just in Japan, but in the world. He had a massive stable of characters, starting out as an Akuma main, then shifting to Cody and then Ken. But he could also bust out other characters like Evil Ryu or Elena if the situation called for it.
As great as his 2012 and 2013 were, though, Momochi entered 2014 still looking for his first solo major championship to add to what was now three Super Battle Opera wins after another Third Strike victory in 2012. He had made Grand Finals three times in those two years, falling at 2nd place at both CEO 2012 and 2013 as well as his most brutal loss yet: a pair of Game 5 losses at the Street Fighter 25th Anniversary Tournament's UK Qualifier against Mago.
Southeast Asia Major 2014 didn't look like it was going to change things for Momochi. He fell into losers after he was upset by one of the few American players in attendance, Jayce the Ace, in Winners Side Top 16. If Momochi wanted to pick up his first major title in Singapore, he was going to have to win nine sets in a row. He did exactly that. In Top 8 alone, Momochi defeated Xian, Bonchan, Tokido, Fuudo, and Kazunoko -- players who now have a combined 6 Evo titles and a Capcom Cup championship between them.
Not only was this one of the greatest losers runs you'll ever see, it also punched Momochi's ticket to Capcom Cup 2014. Just like in Singapore, Momochi faced an uphill battle after an early loss, this time against British fighting game legend Ryan Hart. This time, at a tournament featuring 16 of the best players in the world, Momochi was going to have to win seven sets in a row to reach the summit. To even reach Top 4, he was going to have to get past the man who sent him down to losers in the first place.
This was back when Capcom Cup's main bracket sets were first to 2 until Grand Finals, so there was very little margin for error. Momochi took the first game, and pushed Ryan Hart to literally his final pixel in the last round of Game 2, only to get blown up by a focus-cancelled Shoryuken into Ultra Combo to win the game and put Momochi up against the ropes. Game 3, of course, also went to a final round, but this time, it looked pretty much over from the start. Ryan Hart built up a nearly 90% life lead. And then Momochi decided he simply would not get hit again.
He put Ryan Hart into the corner and started whittling away. And then, Momochi hit the biggest Air Tatsu of his life, crossing Ryan Hart up and opening him up for a massive confirm into an Ultra Combo to finish the comeback and advance in the bracket. Momochi wouldn't lose another game until the first game of Grand Finals against Xian.
Momochi quickly figured out Xian's Poison, though, and after Momochi went up 2-1, Xian felt forced to switch to Gen. It was enough to push the set to a Game 5, but Momochi figured the Gen out pretty quickly. He won six rounds in a row to reset the bracket and then go up 2-0 in the final set. Xian bounced back to take Game 3, but it was too little, too late, and Momochi became the second ever Street Fighter champion at Capcom Cup.
He remained atop the Street Fighter world as the calendar flipped to 2015. According to Liquipedia, Momochi made Grand Finals at 5 of his next 6 tournaments, including wins at Shadowloo Showdown 2 and the SXSW Gaming Fighters Invitational, where he claimed a $10,000 grand prize with wins over Daigo, Gamerbee and Kazunoko in the main bracket.
It all culminated at Evo 2015. Rather than making a big run through losers as he had gotten so accustomed to in 2014, Momochi cruised to Grand Finals at the biggest open bracket of the year, standing tall as the final person in winners bracket out of the 2,227 entrants.
But the job wasn't done. Gamerbee's Adon stood in his way, and Gamerbee was able to push the bracket to a reset. Momochi switched to Evil Ryu, and the second set of Grand Finals was as back and forth as it gets. In Game 5, after Momochi won the first round, his controller malfunctioned, and despite attempts to get it working again, he was forced to give up the second round of the game and borrow Tokido's fightstick for the final final round of Evo 2015. Despite it all, Momochi was able to gather himself and clinch his first Evo title, becoming the first player to ever win an Evo title and a Capcom Cup win.
It wasn't the way anybody wanted the tournament to end. Momochi has expressed guilt over the way the controller malfunction broke up the pacing of the match, saying it left a bad aftertaste in his mouth. But for what it's worth, GamerBee has always accepted the result, telling Crush Groove in a 2017 interview, 'Momochi was saying sorry a few times to me, even when we got the trophy. I know it's not his fault, but I know he will feel he has that responsibility. It was a decent fight. That's just the result."
11 years later, Momochi remains the only player with a Capcom Cup and Evo Las Vegas win; the only other player with an Evo title to pair with a Capcom Cup win is MenaRD, who joined the club with his Evo Japan 2024 victory.
Momochi's gameplay isn't the only reason why he has a thriving career in the industry, though. Along with his wife and fellow Street Fighter pro Chocoblanka, whom he met when she was working at an arcade hosting one of his tournaments, Momochi has been active in building a scene that can create a new generation of Japanese fighting game players. "About a year after we became pro gamers, we started to think about, 'What will we have left behind after retiring?" Momochi told Manekai in 2019, about a year after the creation of Shinobism, Momochi's business, named after his Shinobi bloodline.
Through Shinobism, Momochi and Chocoblanka sponsored Japanese fighting game players for over five years, first under the Fudoh team and then Shinobism Gaming. Momochi and Chocoblanka also founded an arcade space to give young, up-and-coming players a place to practice and hone their skills, Studio Sky. "The things you enjoyed as a kid helped you into the adult you are, and I want to create something like that for the new generation," Momochi said in an Echo Fox feature. "I wanted to make a place where young people and all kinds of people can play together. Thus, Studio Sky was born."
Momochi considered retirement in the late 2010s. "Sometimes, I thought that I could put more effort into running events, or once I stop being as effective as a player, concentrate more on raising up the next generation of players," he told Manekai. "We've had discussions between the two of us about how 'it's about time.'"
But despite his own wavering confidence, Momochi has proven time and time again that he has plenty in the tank. Not long after that Manekai interview, Momochi took the gold at Evo Japan 2019, coming out on top of the 1,024-player bracket and taking by far his most prestigious win in Street Fighter V to that point. Momochi remains the only player in the world who owns trophies from Capcom Cup, Evo Las Vegas and Evo Japan. He claimed another major SFV title at the Capcom Pro Tour's Asia Premier later that year and would remain one of the strongest Kolin players in the world, at least until the siren song of his former SFIV main Cody called for the game's final year.
The start of Street Fighter 6 suggested Momochi might be slowing down. He struggled to land on a main character. He was outclassed by his fellow Japanese players in the World Warrior circuit and finished an uncharacteristic 193rd at Evo Japan 2024. But with the release of Ed, Momochi once again found his groove, swiftly mastering and innovating with the new character. Just a few months later, Momochi finished 3rd at the prestigious Topanga Championship 5 and followed it up by finishing fourth out of over 5,000 entrants at Evo 2024 the very next week.
From the small arcades of Japan's countryside to the biggest stages in the world of Street Fighter, Momochi has seen and done it all. Few people have built a bigger and better life through fighting games, and despite the fact that his 40s are approaching, Momochi has shown the world that he is far from finished.
