12. Juicebox
Before this match, I should set up the history here.
In Vanilla SF4, Shiro was hands-down the best Abel in the world. He was top 10 in the arcade's BP and constantly beat Daigo in high-profile matches. Justin Wong tried to play Abel against Daigo in 2009 solely because of how shaky Daigo looked in his matches against Shiro. Daigo rocked him and Wong switched to Balrog and they had one of the hugest finals of all time. Nothing showed the gap between Americans and the Japanese more than Wong trying to duplicate Shiro's success.
So here's Juicebox, a goofy kid who plays Abel and dances out his ultras. He's good but not a top-tier American player. He's playing the best Abel of all time, now having switched over to Makoto.
Juicebox gets into his head hard. He uses ultra 1 to punish a backdash of Makoto's. Then in round 2, he starts guessing that Makoto will try to jump after a knockdown and punishes him twice, once by using a psychic Falling Sky. Shiro just looks mindblown. Juicebox isn't so fortunate in later rounds but still outpositions him to take the match cleanly.
That's not all Juicebox did. The match before that was against CJ Truth, a 13 year old kid who's going to be very, very good. He basically does the same thing that Shiro did to Xian - builds meter in a hopeless situation, nails him with a combo, fadc ultra with Juri, complete with him doing the kiss and THIS IS THE END FOR YOU. Juicebox's Juri was great - the only really good Juri I saw at Evo this year. See it here --
In top 16, Juicebox has to face Tokido, undoubtedly one of the top 5 players in the world. He lost but put up a great fight. He may have been the star of SF4 day 2.
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xyzzy