This blog entry are notes from Momochi’s stream after Day 3 of Capcom Cup where he looks back on the pools. I am only currently through Day 2 myself, so this will contain spoilers, but I’m really interested in seeing what Momochi talks about. So I’ll take a few notes here about what he says.

New blog post: @momochi212 put up two videos about "The man who came back to life after dying twice" on his journey in the Capcom Cup. https://t.co/LJ2H9ySvNk About 1400 words summarizing two videos (https://t.co/lSuEwBrd5b and https://t.co/DFGQqc60tA) pic.twitter.com/mKkYVmzMfx

— FuguTabetai (@DocFugu) February 19, 2023

He starts off saying that people might think he’s drinking beer, but it’s Sprite, since he’s currently not drinking any alcohol during Capcom Cup. After it’s done, he’ll drink some beer. Chocoblanka says something offscreen, and he talks about how he’s going all out, and someone on chat asks if he’s lost weight (from not drinking).

He says he died twice today, and probably lost weight from that. He was really cheering for Mono (I haven’t watched this yet, but I believe he needed Mono to win for him to advance). He said the place was crazy, and he was really cheering too on the front lines. He thought that Mono had to win 2-0 against Big Bird, otherwise he wouldn’t advance. Once he got the first win he was psyched, but when it went to 1-1 he thought he was done. He first died when he lost to Zhen, and that was the second time. It was his bad for not winning though, he can’t blame Mono, you have to win on your own. So while he was depressed, he didn’t watch the end of the match, and then Pugera comes over and says “Hey, what’s wrong? Mono won.” (Pugera would never use an exclamation point based on all the interviews I’ve seen with him.) Momochi told him Mono needed to win 2-0 for him to advance. Pugera says that on the Japanese stream the comments were just going wild. Momochi wouldn’t be consoled, and just said they don’t know what is going on. But Pugera insisted, people were going nuts, so Momochi went back to do some calculations (Chocoblanka is laughing in the background here – she’s super great and supportive, Shinobism really relies on her for all the behind-the-scenes work she does.) Momochi is then like, “wait, I made it out?” So then he was ressurected.

It was like being on a roller coaster. He said “If you have two birthdays, you need to die twice.” He left Feb. 12th, his birthday, and arrived in America on Feb. 12th again, his birthday. He aged two years in that day. Answering some questions from his chat – he didn’t see the final set. He did go back and watch it on stream just before this though. It was an amazing match – and he thinks it was better than he hadn’t seen it because he probably would have aged to 50 years old if he had (NB: I’m going to turn 49 this year, so I’m almost at Momochi’s “way too old” age I guess. Sniff.) It was a really amazing match, and Big Bird put on some crazy pressure.

He also talked about how there were two F.A.N.G.s – the best one in Canada (Mortsy) too. Crazy stuff happened in their group. A dictator from the LCQ joined all of a sudden, there were two F.A.N.G.s, it was a really unusual group. A trigger 2 Cammy, you never see that, Momochi was asking Akira (from JP SFL – the leader of Nagoya OJA Body Stars) and Youshikibi (another strong Cammy player from Japan) and asked them to both play trigger 2 please. It turns out he didn’t need it, but was prepared for it. He practiced with trigger 2 exclusively, and halfway through thought “wait, this might be a bluff?” His CFN was all trigger 2, but maybe it was a bluff?

Talking about Zhen: he was strong, but he was really trying to think of a way to win 2-0. So he thought about different angles for anti-airs that Zhen might do, and he really played the match differently than he normally would (again, I haven’t seen this yet, so I guess he won?) If he played his normal way, he isn’t sure that he could have gotten the 2-0. But once he lost the first game, his hopes of getting out of the pool in 1st place were gone. That really hurt his motivation. So losing that game was really a blow. And this was because he lost a game to Mono – if that hadn’t happened things would have been different. That’s how the pool went. The person that hurt you goes on later to help you.

In the end, after everyone went at it with everyone else, this is the result they ended up with. He’s happy that in the end he made it out. He’s in losers, but he’s still in it.

From a second video, Momochi talks about stuff going on behind the scenes. There were three days to get to where they are. One way things could have gone would have been to do blocks A and B on Day 1, C and D on Day 2, and E and F on Day 3, with the other two in there somewhere. Instead they spread all the blocks out over all the days. If they hadn’t done it that way, Momochi thinks he wouldn’t have made it out of his group. He would have had to play all his matches in one day and on his first day he played too tight. He thought he wasn’t playing well on that first day. He was playing not to lose too much (instead of playing to win.) He thought he played better on the 2nd day, even though he lost on the 3rd day too.

He’s said it before, but he thinks you are most nervous in pools, and particularly in your first pools match. Top 8 and Grand Finals he doesn’t think people are as nervous. You are most nervous in the opening phase. He was hardly able to stand, and then Mono picked up his melting form. Mono is apparently coming to EVO Japan, so he really needs to thank him there. He tells everyone on stream to thank him for saving Momochi. Of course, if he loses it’s over, but if he wins he has to thank Mono.

In their block, there were too many “Mo”s. Mortsy, Momochi, Mono. In Angry Bird’s group, one of the players from Mexico’s CFN is MORROCHI (information thanks to Shiramizu, a famous Japanese account that gathers up lots of information about foreign players and passes that on to the twitter pro players. Nice to see him get the shout-out.) After Mono won, Morrochi came and took a picture with Momochi and tweeted that out apparently. He seems to be of the same age as Higuchi, 21 or so. He and Mono had a really long talk about Ken and anti Big Bird strategies, when Big Bird was right there next to them, but they weren’t speaking English. He thinks they might have been speaking Spanish (and talks a bit about the languages of Spain and PR) so that Big Bird wouldn’t understand. Morrochi told him that after his match with Mono was over, that he taught him a lot about the Ken matchup. I was hoping they would do even more. I knew it when I saw them talking. The power of “Mo” was on display: Momochi, Mono, Mortsy, and Morrochi. We gathered all of that, and attacked Big Bird.

Chocoblanka says she say Momochi cheering with his arms up, going full out, and he never does that. He had his hands clasped together in prayer. He says his prayers were answered. Each of the matches was super critical to the final result. Big Bird didn’t know the point situation either; he thought that he was done after the set. When Momochi was cheering, both Big Bird and Angry Bird gave him a big stare, thinking he was the one that made it out. He told them to look at the numbers, he had lost in the direct matchup. Strange that Momochi lost to the person in 1st place and 3rd place, but somehow made it out in 2nd place. Momochi thought he was out, but the comments section was going nuts saying he was in, and he had to re-calculate. (Some discussion between Chocoblanka and Momochi about math.)