Welcome back to Inside Esports.
The past few weeks have taken us through the League of Legends side of the esports world. This week, we return to the fighting game community — and we’re returning with one of its most decorated champions. I had the privilege of sitting down with seven-time EVO champion Arslan “Arslan Ash” Siddique.
I first spoke to Arslan at EVO 2026 among the chaos of Day 2 of the largest open tournament in the world. First rule of thumb, you avoid talking to fighting game players on the second day of an open, as the best ones are always playing the most on Day 2.
On that day, he would have run into countless faces: players, fans, and possibly other media members.
The brief interaction, however, was enough. When he first looked at his screen and saw me on camera, Arslan said, “I know you!”
People remembering me from previous interactions isn’t uncommon. But what struck me was what came next.
Arslan Ash is a player whose attention to detail runs so deep that he relocated to a new country to find the gaps in a game he’s seemingly already mastered.
I hope you enjoy this story.
Paul
Why Japan?
Arslan officially announced his move and change of operations to Japan in February.
Multiple reasons drove the decision.
Arslan likes Japan, which made it an easy choice. Living there as a resident also simplifies the visa process for international travel. But beyond personal preference and logistics, the decision runs deeper. The competitive scenes for both Tekken and Fatal Fury: City of Wolves (more on this later) are simply stronger there.
In Pakistan, he said, players compete in community groups. Arslan’s group had seven people. Players have their circles and play within them. At some point, they’ve mapped their training partners’ tendencies, their characters, and their habits. While fundamental strength can be sharpened at this level, the problem surfaces when players leave the region for an EVO or Combo Breaker and find themselves lacking character knowledge — because those characters simply never came up back home.
Arslan pointed to Tekken 8 characters like Lili, Lee, and Xiaoyu as examples — characters that barely exist in Pakistan’s local scene. Sure, the frame data is available to study, but building a real game plan and a feel for those characters requires actually playing against them, and there hasn’t been a reason to until now.
“I knew their style all day,” he said, describing the limitation of playing the same pool of opponents for years. “You get used to it. You say, ‘OK, I know what you are going to do.’”
It wasn’t a complaint or a criticism of one of the strongest regions in the world that he helped build. Instead, it was an honest assessment of what he needed to improve. Japan fixes that.
The online is better, both in terms of connection quality and accessibility to queue into Korea as easily as Tokyo. Arslan will be facing different players and characters.
“I will be facing like 100-plus styles, so that's like massive change,” Arslan said. “That's actually going to help in changing my strategy, and they're going to make me mentally more prepared for tournaments."
As for his desire to play Fatal Fury, he made a promise to his team that he'd compete in the game this year and doing that from Pakistan was close to impossible, as the game hasn’t permeated the scene.
The move wasn't a reset. It was a calculated decision to get better.