Plans to try different Shoto instead
Street Fighter 6 received its Season 3 update earlier this month, and while most seem to feel Capcom played it too safe with the patch, there were still hundreds of changes made to the game.
The first Street Fighter 6 Evo champion is now claiming Ken is no longer strong enough to win tournaments in Season 3 after competing at CEO 2025 this past weekend.
Reject|AngryBird took to social media following the big competition to share some of his concerns over the character that helped take him to the top of the world in 2023.
“After coming back from CEO my opinion on Ken is that he’s amazing still but not consistent enough to win a tournament with!,” wrote AngryBird on X. “So from now on will focus on switching to Ryu not sure if I will have him ready for EWC though.”
Ken did receive some nerfs to his Jinrai Kicks and crouching medium punch, but it wasn’t immediately clear if that would be enough to make the character worse off.
After coming back from CEO my opinion on Ken is that he’s amazing still but not consistent enough to win a tournament with! So from now on will focus on switching to Ryu not sure if I will have him ready for EWC though.
— AngryBird (@FGC_Angrybird) June 17, 2025
In AngryBird’s eyes, it seems like that might be the case, however, he unfortunately hasn’t gone into anymore detail as to why he’s feeling that way.
The former Evo champ finished in 33rd place at CEO, but does the rest of the Ken army back up his claim?
Well, no Ken player obviously won the event, though, the fiery Shoto was still the most popular character in SF6’s top 128.
Moreover, we saw the youngster E1S|NotPedro and FAV|Ryukichi reach top 8 with Ken at CEO while BLK|Craime also used him as a secondary too.
The Season 3 competitive season is still very young, so we’ll see how things continue to advance at places like Blink Respawn and Evo in the coming months.
It is interesting to hear that the former Evo champ is apparently eyeing Ryu as a potential main replacement since the Street Fighter poster boy was the most improved by the new patch and given some strong tools.
We saw Craime, Mouz|EndingWalker and Capcom Cup runner-up 2G|Blaz take Ryu to at least a top 16 finish while reigning Evo champ FLY|Punk busted out the Shoto too.
It’s obviously unclear too just how serious AngryBird is being in his post about the viability of Ken.
So we’ll just have to wait and see how the season plays out and if AngryBird really intends to make the switch moving forward.