LAHORE: Four years after conquering Japan and America, Pakistan’s Arslan ‘Ash’ Siddique this month won another Evolution Championship Series (EVO), an annual esports event that focuses exclusively on fighting games, cementing his place as one of the best Tekken players in the world. 

Siddique has collected almost two dozen trophies, earned the most money by any eSports player based in Pakistan, and been crowned eSports player of the year multiple times. Since 2021, he has also launched a boot camp to train other talented Tekken players from Pakistan, many of whom have gone on to win important tournaments. 

His own major titles include, among others, EVO 2019 in Las Vegas, the WePlay Ultimate Fighting League 2021 in Kyiv, Ukraine, and EVO Japan 2019 and 2023. The creator and director of Tekken 7, Katsuhiro Harada, himself presented Siddique with his latest trophy. 

All in all, he has won 22 Tekken 7 tournaments around the world and earned $123,169 in prize money alone, not counting the income from his YouTube channel and sponsorship deals. The only person to surpass Siddique’s Tekken earnings is his arch-rival, Korea’s Bae ‘Knee’ Jae-Min. But Jae-Min has been competing professionally for over 13 years while Siddique has been competing for just under five. Siddique also beat ‘Knee’ in the final of EVO 2019 and had previously bested him at a tournament in Dubai. 

“I think my defense is very strong,” Siddique told Arab News in an interview at his home in Lahore earlier this month, explaining his strengths and saying he relied on “evasive maneuvers and decision-making.” 

Part of his strong defense, Siddique said, was his character of choice Zafina, an Arab-origin character introduced in Tekken 6. 

“Zafina’s back dash and low block are really good, she can evade a lot, and she can punish people afterwards,” Siddique explained, as a Tekken 7 wall clock ticked behind him. 

Before Zafina, Siddique used to play with Kazumi, a character in a white kimono who also had a stonewall defense, but after she was nerfed — which in gaming refers to a character or weapon’s power being reduced in a new instalment or update of a video game — Siddique had to find a replacement. 

“I asked my [mother] which character do you like. [She] looked at all the characters and said the one wearing a scarf, ‘Zafina, I like her a lot’,” Siddique said, smiling. “Because [my mother] is a Muslim and Zafina, she’s an Egyptian.” 

Siddique grew up in Daroghawala, a humble area in the Old City neighborhood of Lahore, and said he developed an interest in Tekken when he was just eight years old. 

“After school I would directly go to the arcade in front of my house to play games.” 

From there, Siddique went on to bigger arcades and inner city tournaments. 

Now 27 and married this February, gaming remains his primary source of income. 

“I never thought I’d make it this far,” he said, speaking about the criticism he received from friends and family for choosing gaming as a profession. “This is why I want to support other people who want to become professional gamers.” 

To this end, Siddique has set up a Tekken boot camp in the living room of his home in Lahore’s upscale Gulberg neighborhood, where people come to train from all over the country. He has also started his own fighting game team called Ashes Gaming. 

“Atif [Butt] has won [trophies], [Imran] Khan has won, [Awais[ Honey has won, Heera [Malik],” he said, naming players who had trained at his boot camp. “I mean slowly but surely everybody’s won something, and given good performances wherever they went.” 

Outside virtual reality, Siddique’s career got its big launch in the Arab world. His first sponsor, in 2018, was the Dubai-based vSlash eSports. Siddique then joined FATE eSports in 2020, a Jordanian team. In March of this year, he joined an eSports team from Saudi Arabia called Twisted Minds, their first representative in the fighting game community. 

Siddique has concurrently also been sponsored by Red Bull eSports since 2019. 

“I’ve always had huge respect for the strides gaming has made in the Middle East and what it means for gamers in Pakistan,” he said, wearing a Twisted Minds shirt and Red Bull cap. 

One of Siddique’s earliest trophies, between the Japan and America hauls in 2019, was in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, he said, where he won $17,000. 

A year before that, he had won the King of Fighters IV tournaments in Oman and Kuwait, often using his favorite character ‘Ash,’ from which he took his gaming moniker. Then, he went on to Dubai. 

“The Dubai one was my fourth [Tekken tournament]. The first time I went, it was in Oman. [Then] I lost in Malaysia. Then I went to Dubai for [a small] tournament, which I won.” 

After that Siddique went to another, larger tournament in Dubai, Omni Universal Gaming (OUG) 2018, where ‘Knee’ and a lot of other big players were coming. He convinced his sponsors in Dubai to invite him a second time. 

“I made a name for myself. Knee was considered, is still considered, one of the best, or like the GOAT [Greatest Of All Time] of Tekken,” said Siddique, saying beating Knee gave him a lot of exposure. “That there’s someone who can defeat the Tekken legend himself.” 

But while Siddique has many accolades and wins to his name, he has also missed out on half the tournaments he has been invited to in the last few years, including his own sponsor Red Bull’s Kumite tournament in America in 2021. The reason: the lack of support the Pakistan government offers for eSport visas. 

All this, Siddique said, despite having won ‘best eSports player of the year’ awards from ESPN and TheScore, in addition to other media organizations. 

But the champion still aspires to keep winning for Pakistan, including at EVO 2023 in Las Vegas. 

“The biggest tournament is always Las Vegas, it’s on August 5-7,” Siddique said. “Inshallah I’ll do [more] positive things for the gaming community in Pakistan.”