In the first few weeks since Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves was released, players have come to recognize Mai Shiranui as one of the weaker characters in that game. On the other hand, the character feels quite strong in Street Fighter 6, a game in which she is guest appearing in.
Over this past weekend, fighting game fans were able to spectate Street Fighter 6 tournaments being held at Asian Champions League 2025 (over 770 entrants) and Brussels Challenge 2025 (over 150 entrants). This provides us with a great opportunity to see just how well Mai Shiarnui is performing in the current meta by taking a look at the character usage stats for both events.
Ultimately, Mai Shiranui was unable to come in first place for either event. Additionally, she only appeared twice in the top 8 for Asian Champions League 2025, but was completely absent from the top 8 at Brussels Challenge 2025.
However, outside of the top 8 portions of the brackets for both events, Mai appeared quite frequently. A total of nine players used her in the top 64 of Asian Champions League 2025 (plus one more if you count the player using her as a secondary). She was the most used character at the event.
Meanwhile, at Brussels Challenge 2025, she was used by four competitors in the top 32. This marked her as the second most used character at the event after Akuma (who was used by six players in the top 32).
Overall, 21 out of 25 characters saw usage at the Asian Champions League 2025 top 64 while 22 out of 25 were played in the top 32 of Brussels Challenge 2025. This implies that the game is in a fairly well balanced state right now, but who knows what will happen when the Season 3 patch goes live.
Check it all out below:
• Mai – 9 (1)
• Cammy – 6
• M. Bison – 5 (2)
• Kimberly – 5
• Juri – 5
• Akuma – 4
• Ken – 3
• Guile – 3
• Zangief – 3
• Blanka – 3
• Dee Jay – 3
• JP – 2
• Luke – 2
• Rashid – 2
• Chun-Li – 2
• A.K.I. – 1 (1)
• Ed – 1 (1)
• Ryu – 1
• Marisa – 1
• Lily – 1
• Terry – 0 (1)
• Dhalsim – 0
• E. Honda – 0
• Manon – 0
• Jamie – 0
• Unknown – 2
• Akuma – 6
• Mai – 4
• Ken – 3
• Ed – 2
• Ryu – 2
• Kimberly – 2
• Manon – 1 (1)
• Cammy – 1 (1)
• M. Bison – 1 (1)
• Chun-Li – 1
• Jamie – 1
• Dhalsim – 1
• Zangief – 1
• E. Honda – 1
• Juri – 1
• Lily – 1
• JP – 1
• Dee Jay – 1
• Luke – 1
• Terry – 0 (1)
• A.K.I. – 0 (1)
• Guile – 0 (1)
• Rashid – 0
• Blanka – 0
• Marisa – 0