Now that the dust has settled in Anaheim, California after the Capcom Cup and the Street Fighter scene shifts into the offseason, a few questions still linger in the air. Du NuckleDu Dang may have won the Cup, but as we await Season 2 of the competitive circuit and prepare to grind matches on the new patch, we wonder: who is truly the top dog in SFV?Coming into the championship , there were certainly favorites, top seeds and tournament winners expected to perform well. Hajime Tokido Taniguchi, Seonwoo Infiltration Lee, Justin Wong, Yusuke Momochi -- four players who looked set to climb the brackets, but all fell short of the prize. Three of them didnt even win a game en route to elimination. Meanwhile, the grand finals featured relative surprises in Ricki Ortiz and Du, who, despite positive on-site analysis were less favored than the titans of Street Fighter.Many speculated about how the top players could have dropped so fast, citing challenges with staying consistent in Street Fighter V. One of the Cups competitors, Ryan FChamp Ramirez, sees it more as a growing level of competition.The event had 32 world class player;, anyone can lose to any player, Ramirez told ESPN. Its the World Finals. Going 0-2 on Capcom Cup is not the same as going 0-2 in pools.With a growing level of competition, its not so much the raw talent, but ability to handle matchups. When 32 of the best players in the world assemble, it sometimes isnt enough to just be good at your character of choice, but good against others mains. Kenneth KBrad Bradley pointed to Evil Geniuses teammate Justin Wongs elimination as illustration of this.[For] Justin, its all about who you draw first round, said Bradley. Justin always loses to Chun-Li. It does not matter what Chun-Li it is, Justin will lose to Chun-Li. There is not a question. So Justin went 0-2 the last two years of Capcom Cup, then he got Chun-Li first. So its like, now hes freaking out, its all in his head, then he lost to Chun-Li right away.Tokido, a top player who took second at both Final Round and the NorCal Regionals, ran into trouble against DR Ray, whose main training partner is Caba, a top-tier Ryu player who plays a similar style to Tokido. Looking at Infiltration, the Evo champion, commentator David Ultradavid Philip Graham believed it might be an issue of visibility that brought down the champ.Infiltration dominated the first few months of Street Fighter V, but hasnt looked nearly that strong since the summer, Graham told ESPN. I think he figured out how to play SFV well earlier than anyone else, but the rest of the top players caught up, the overall strategy shifted, and he didnt keep up. It seemed like he was trying to change by picking new characters in recent events, but I guess that didnt work well enough.Even for players like Momochi, some of the most dangerous players were lurking in the lower bracket. Hiroyuki Eita Nagata can fly under the radar sometimes, but hes a Ken player who placed in the top 8 at Evo, beating Tokido to earn that spot. So when Momochi met Eita in the lower bracket, it was dire straits for the EG player.Momochi losing, he was one of the favorites to win the tournament, but he had to fight Eita, said Bradley. So he fights Eita, and Eitas a crazy style of Ken [while] Momochis a very slow-paced, calculated fighter ... Those are the people theyre going to lose to, so it all depends on who you have to fight in the Capcom Cup.Even in spite of the high-profile upsets in the first rounds of Capcom Cup, the level of competition at the tournament was some of the highest yet for the fledgling game, released earlier this year.Of the top 8 at Capcom Cup, the first four made top 8 at Evo, said Graham. Fourth place was considered the best player in Japan for quite a while, third place was last years Capcom Cup champion, second place is one of the best U.S. players ever, and the overall winner has pretty clearly been the best player on Earth the past couple months. Its hard to be consistent in any game, but I dont think SFV is worse for that than most. Instead, its more that games tend to be volatile early in their lives before people have figured things out. That was the case for SF4, Marvel vs Capcom 3, [and others].Ramirez echoed those sentiments, pointing to Street Fighter Vs relative youth in the fighting game scene.The game has only been out for 10 months, said Ramirez. Most situations and nuances are not fully optimized yet. I expect more consistent results from top players next season.In Street Fighter V, more than ever, its about who shows up to win. Ricki Ortiz tweeted about her practice leading up to the event, and Du dealt with significant trials and tribulations early in the year, according to Graham. Both persevered and found their way to the main stage, a single series from the prize.I think its all about who wants it more, Bradley told ESPN. So Ricki, Ricki plays, but Ricki doesnt grind a ton. But before this tournament, Ricki was grinding a lot, Ricki was playing every single day. I went over to the house and we played Cammy vs. Chun-Li a lot.Both players practiced really hard, said Ramirez. [In the] two weeks before Capcom Cup they easily clocked in 120 hours each. They beat so many good players along the way, [and] I am so proud of them.As the scene grows and the game along with it, the top players will continue to be challenged by more newcomers, attracted by the Capcom Pro Tour circuit and the growing number of Street Fighter tournaments. For Graham, its not about old guard versus new guard, but a matter of understanding the game, gaining confidence and showing up.There will always be shifts, of course, said Graham. No well-made game remains static, either in its strategies or its successful players. As SFV develops and the players come to understand it better, it will settle down a bit. But as above, I dont think its any more upset-heavy than other games. Nike Zoom Wholesale . -- About a third of the way through the regular season, the Washington Wizards are at . Nike Zoom For Sale . - The Oakland Raiders re-signed offensive lineman Khalif Barnes on Friday. http://www.cheapnikezoom.net/ . Houston won 3-0 to advance to face New York in the Eastern Conference semifinals. Last in the game, Di Vaio and Romero got into a shoving match with several Houston players. Romero appeared to elbow and kick Houston defender Kofi Sarkodie. Nike Zoom Discount . "I wrote 36 on my sheet at the beginning of the game," the Cincinnati coach said, referring the yard line the ball would need to be snapped from. Nike Zoom Online Shop . Nine days before the opening ceremony, organizing committee chief Dmitry Chernyshenko said Wednesday that Sochi is "fully ready" and will deliver safe, friendly and well-run games that defy the grim reports that have overshadowed preparations. One of the myths about Formula One pre-season testing in Spain is that the February weather in Barcelona and Jerez is anything approaching warm. The sun shines -- albeit low in the sky -- but often the circuits are spotted with frost in the early mornings, and track temperatures are hardly representative of those seen during the season.In 2014 F1 had two pre-season tests in Bahrain, giving teams the opportunity to get to know the new hybrid power units in representative conditions. Next year will see dramatic design changes to the cars themselves, added downforce, and a new approach to F1 rubber. But despite the logic of testing somewhere warm next winter, paddock finances point to another two weeks in Catalunya.In an exclusive interview with ESPN, Pirellis Paul Hembery talked about the challenges ahead for F1s tyre supplier in light of the changes to cars and tyres alike for the 2017 season.The good news is, we do have a test programme, Hembery said. As weve made people aware, we have started a 24 testing day programme split equally between Red Bull, Ferrari, and Mercedes, who have kindly supported us by developing a version of the 2015 car with an aerodynamic package intended to simulate what will be the effect of the 2017 rule regulations. This of course is a huge step forward. Were making such a dramatic change to the tyre width.Challenges? The downforce increases are substantial. The performance requirements are to improve by five seconds compared to the 2015 lap times. In reality, having seen maybe a two-second improvement already this season, next year it is likely that we will substantially improve on the lap time.The initial simulation data that we have would suggest, as I say, that would be easily surpassed. Of course we wont actually see the real cars until we get through to pre-season testing next year. The change is vast, increasing the width of front and rear tyres by six and eight centimetres respectively, which looks good. It makes the cars look very dramatic, with both the front and rear track increased by 20 centimetres each. The intention there is that it will make it easier for teams to overtake; if theyre following another car [we want to ensure] that the tyres wont reach a temperature peak, which has stopped the drivers from overtaking on some occasions. Of course, that will only work if we also reduce the impact of the weight of the aero of one car from another. The suggestions are that that will be improved in the aero. I wouldnt say there is universal opinion on that.Testing their tyres has long been a problem for Pirelli, thanks to the sports understandable focus on keeping costs -- and team travel time -- to a minimum. But with such dramatic changes expected for 2017, Pirelli have finally managed to negotiate much-needed days of mule car testing. But are the agreed test days the ideal solution from a Pirelli perspective?I tthink if you said to somebody, how should you do it correctly?, youd go to a circuit where you race so you have all the data, and youd go in conditions that represent the conditions that youre going to race in, Hembery said.ddddddddddddIn January and February, we will have a good indication when we do our testing now with the three teams. Weve tested at Fiorano and Mugello in early August, where the temperature at the moment is very, very warm. So we will start to get some very clear indications of testing with the mule cars that we have this year. As I said, there is no substitution for getting on the actual cars, which we will get next year and at the moment were undecided where the locations are.From a purely tyre-maker perspective it would be better to be in somewhere warm during that period of time. In the past few years we have been to Bahrain, which allowed us to have a clear indication of the tyre performance at much earlier stage. I understand that teams believe there is a certain cost penalty for doing that, but then again it is a sport that has a few billion spent on it. If the willingness is there Im sure the funding can be found.One session in Bahrain would already be a big step, so we would know where we are during the season, Hembery continued. That might not be able to affect what we do for Australia, but it means we can start working earlier if there are changes needed. Were obviously aiming not to make changes, however the changes are so important that there may well be things that we understand only by going on the track with the 10 or 11 different chassis that we have in Formula One.And if the teams decide that they cant afford a warm-weather test, and we are restricted to a fortnights pre-season testing in Spain in February, what impact would that have on Pirellis ability to test effectively?We can do a lot with simulation and indoor drum testing, Hembery acknowledged. You do the majority of work there, but the interaction between car, tyre and tarmac still requires going out and testing and looking at the tarmac. If thats all been changed, it changes completely the dynamic of the package. In reality you still need to go out on the track and do that testing.We need to have a good understanding how the compounds are working to understand if weve got the scaling right between them, if we have the degradation levels right or whether its too low or too high. [The teams] are still asking for two-stop strategy, which will become harder with less degradation -- why would you change your tyres? At the moment it is primarily due to performance.If we want to have a quicker understanding of how the tyres or compounds in particular are performing, we would need to go to somewhere like Bahrain as early as possible. ' ' '