Tekken games come and go, but the players yet stay. Fergus McGee is an Irish Tekken pro who has been here for well over a decade. Through ups and downs, he has made Evo top 8s, Tekken World Tour finals, all while remaining loyal to his favorite waifu characters. And now, seven whole years after his last TWT appearance, he managed to hop onto the departing train and made it to the Finals in Malmö.
Almost for the first time in Fergus’ career, his beloved Asuka Kazama found herself among the top-tier characters, and his proficiency with her allowed him to get just enough points to qualify, even having missed half the season.
And above this, above Tekken and Ricky Martin fandom, he’s someone who never gives up, someone you can meet at plenty of tournaments across Europe and just have a blast playing against. Enjoy the interview!
You’ve made it to the TWT Finals again, even with missing large chunks of the season. At what point did you feel you could do it? Was it the Evo France run?
Yeah, I had to skip out on quite a few events, especially European Challenger and Master events, due to work and other commitments. I was able to fully commit from September onward. Before Evo France, I was lingering around the 30th-40th place, but my run in there boosted me all the way to around 22nd, which made my qualification realistic and made me push hard for it. Definitely nice to qualify again, seven years later!
What are your thoughts on the current TWT format and schedule? There are some concerns over people abusing the Dojo system.
Schedule-wise, it has been fine, very few clashes making for more events to watch every weekend, no complaints there. The format, however, is definitely up for discussion, as there have been people exploiting the Dojo system to boost their spot in the global and regional leaderboards. The Dojo system is an amazing idea to increase numbers at locals and bring awareness to scenes by having players travel to them to earn points, but as we saw, it is also a double-edged sword, as people abuse the system.
I think an easy way to resolve this is to have better policing of the Dojos. I feel Namco has been very inconsistent on which dojos were downgraded or not in terms of taking away DQs. I know of a UK Dojo that got downgraded when it had just a handful of DQs, yet there are other Dojos with so many DQs that weren’t changed. Also, there have been cases of people inflating dojo numbers through various means, so it definitely needs to be looked into for next season.
Are you doing any special preparation for the upcoming TWT Finals? What are your goals for the tournament?
I just came home from Invictus, a tournament in Torino, in which I had a decent run in the various brackets that it hosted. It was a great opportunity to get offline practice against strong players, as opportunities in Ireland can be scarce.
I play online almost every day, albeit not always Asuka, but I find it hard to train properly online as the experience and netcode are atrocious at the moment. Especially from Ireland, where my connection to the mainland EU is worse than normal, so it’s hard for me to take it seriously. My goal for the tournament is to make it out of groups, which is something I haven’t done in my last two TWT finals runs.
You were always living and dying on your own terms, playing Asuka and other waifu characters regardless of meta. How validated do you feel right now?
I have been playing Asuka since Tekken 6 competitively and loved her before that. Bit of a fanboy, really. So it’s an amazing treat to see her being a meta character and top tier for the first time. When I started to play more professionally in Tekken 7, with sponsors and orgs, I occasionally picked other characters such as Katarina, Lili, and Julia to cover some of her bad matchups. Due to her nature and playstyle with lopsided strengths, she was prone to some really bad matchups, so it felt necessary, as it was difficult to do solo Asuka tournament runs in Tekken 7.
However, in Tekken 8, with the direction of the game, her offense, approach, and mixups got massively buffed, especially in S,2 making her more well-rounded and, as a result, she has less horrific matchups. So yeah, I’m pretty happy with her, and she is my brand as I make lots of content for her with tutorials and guides since early TTT2. So whatever results and success I have with her helps my brand a lot! A lot of people often tell me, “I really hate Asuka, but you deserve it!” [laughs]
If you had to explain Season 2 Asuka and why she works to someone who doesn’t play her, what would be the key points you would mention?
The biggest strength of S2 Asuka is that she has a lot of chip damage, plus-frames, safety in launchers, high damage output, and strong oki. Her option coverage with her new move [uf12], especially with install, allows her to control situations a lot easier in terms of tracking.
A lot of her moves often give her this situation in the first place, such as [WR1+2], [ff1], [FC df3*], and other advantageous situations, making it easier for her to control how the opponent responds and force her deadly 50/50s easier. On top of this, she has amazing mixups and approach, she is extremely hard to pressure with her plethora of defensive moves, with big rewards on reading the opponent’s offense.
What are some further Asuka changes you’d like to see?
Along with the rest of the roster, I’d like her to receive nerfs to the strengths I’ve mentioned above, make her go back to being a more defensive, read-oriented character that she originally was by toning down her offensive tools and easy option coverage. I grew up with Asuka having this aforementioned playstyle, so this sudden change in Tekken 8 doesn’t sit well with me; it can feel very unsatisfying.
I feel a lot of people have this opinion about their character as well. The only buff or bug fix I want is her [f2] to work consistently as a whiff punish, as it has issues of just teleporting through the opponent or just whiffing point blank when it shouldn’t. This is a new Tekken 8 issue; it didn’t happen before.
You’ve been playing against and consistently beating many characters who were considered unfavorable for Asuka. Who would say are her worst matchups nowadays?
In S2, her bad matchups became less problematic, so there is nothing worse than a 4-6 for her. I do think that currently her worst matchups are the Bears, as she has poor punishes on their abusable stuff, doesn’t really gain anything extra on them, and her main mixup low [d1+2] doesn’t exist pretty much due to their legs. Bryan, Claudio, Zafina, Alisa, Lili, King, and Clive are also issues for her.
What’s your read on Tekken 8’s current balance and trajectory? Do you think they course-corrected enough since the Season 2 launch?
Personally, I would rather that Heat and installs just did not exist. Hopefully, for the next game, they can go back to more traditional Tekken that we saw with Tekken 7 and prior. At the moment, the game is weirdly balanced in the sense that everyone is extremely strong. I think this game only has two tiers, which are S+ and S, with small gaps in between characters. But that could be a problem in itself, as pretty much everyone is very obnoxious to play against. [laughs]
Season 2 release was brutal, completely awful. They did make some good changes since then, and definitely, mechanics-wise, it’s much better than Season 1, as S1 had absurd things such as powercrush heat engagers, more chip damage, and +17 heat engage dashes. But that’s been massively improved now, we just need to reduce move bloat and tone the overall character power level further down.
What’s your opinion on Miary Zo? People have been split; some call her the best release yet, while others are underwhelmed by her lack of Tekken 8-isms. Where do you stand?
Well, as a waifu player, I am delighted with Miary. However, people saying she is straying away from the Tekken 8 direction and has healthier mixups are mistaken, I think. This only applies to her heatsmash, where she has counterplay and more guesswork. However, her FC mixup is incredibly strong, as is her MOR stance, which has a chunky hellsweep with an extension in heat that can wallsplat. I think she is actually incredibly strong, a potential top 10-15 character. She definitely plays Tekken 8 well, it’s just not from heatsmash.
Harada has always been unusually forward for a fighting game producer, and now he’s openly talking about stepping away. What are your feelings on his decision, and how do you think it will affect the series and the competitive side?
I grew up with Tekken, it’s my childhood franchise, and Harada has always been involved in it. So it’s definitely sad to see him go; he has always been the face of Tekken, and I don’t think anyone could ever replace that and his legacy. I’m happy I got the opportunity to meet him quite a few times over the years and got pics with him.
As far as I know, he’s going to Malmö for the TWT finals, so I’ll be sure to get something signed from him and a final picture. How it’ll affect the future of the series, I’m not sure at all. We’re already seeing influence from other developers and game designers in Tekken 8, so I’m very cautious; we’ll just have to wait and see, I suppose.
What are your plans for 2026?
Hopefully, to repeat my performances that I had in 2025 again, to qualify for TWT again, and try to secure an EWC spot, as I haven’t done it before.
Any final words for your fans?
I’m not just a tournament player; I’m also a content creator, so I have to extend my gratitude to everyone who’s been following and supporting me on my platforms, especially on Twitch. You’re all amazing!
You can follow Fergus on his channels and socials: Twitch, YouTube, and X.
