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Daigo Umehara (梅原 大吾 Umehara Daigo, born 19 May 1981), is a renowned Japanese arcade fighting video game player. He specializes in 2D arcade fighting games, mainly those released by Capcom. Known as "Daigo" or "The Beast" in the west and "Umehara" or "Ume" in Japan, Umehara is being hailed as the world's most famous Street Fighter player or the greatest Street Fighter player, he currently holds a world record of "the most successful player in major tournaments of Street Fighter" in Guinness World Records.
The Dramatic Comeback
Umehara started becoming famous internationally from the YouTube video clips of his match in the Losers bracket final in Evolution Championship Series 2004's Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike competition where he made a dramatic comeback against Justin Wong's Chun-Li. In the final round of match 1, Umehara's Ken was down to his last pixel of vitality. At this point, any special attack would knock Umehara's character out if connected, since special attacks deal chip damage even when blocked. In an attempt to win the round, Wong attempted to hit Umehara's Ken with Chun-Li's multihit Super Art move "Hou Yoku Sen" (鳳翼扇). However, instead of avoiding it, Umehara chose to "Parry," a technique whereby an incoming attack is blocked without the player losing any health, but by doing so requires moving toward opponent's direction in the same time a hit lands, within four of thirty frames per second of the impact animation. After the move was launched, not only were all 15 hits Parried, but Umehara also managed to get into a good position to make a powerful attacking combo that knocked Chun-Li out instead. This moment was recorded and later spread on the Internet, gaining immense popularity.
NHK's TV program, MAG-NET, has called this moment "Kiseki no Gyakuten Geki" (奇跡の逆転劇) or "The miraculous reversal play".
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