Kakeru, one of the world’s strongest Street Fighter 6 players and a Capcom Cup champion, has been forced to retire at the height of his career due to neurological issues.
Kakeru Watanabe is a 28-year-old professional Street Fighter player whose career started taking off after the pandemic in Street Fighter V’s final years.
His results really started to show on the release of Street Fighter 6 in 2023, becoming one of the first Japanese players to make waves in the game’s competitive scene. That year, he even made Top 8 at Evo, finishing 4th out of ~7,000 other competitors.
However, some of his greatest achievements would take place in 2024, when he got second place at Evo Japan, 2nd at Topanga Cup, and later won the most important Street Fighter tournament of the year — Capcom Cup.
Kakeru has also been on a roll this year, finishing in the Top 8 at Red Bull Kumite and second at Evo 2025 against two-time Capcom Cup champion MenaRD… but problems started to arise at the Esports World Cup in August.
Suddenly, he pulled out of the competition, citing severe food poisoning that required emergency medical treatment. Things were quiet for Kakeru in the months that followed, but in October, the player dropped news that left the entire community shaken.
Kakeru retires after neurological dysfunction diagnosis
Kakeru was scheduled to compete in Street Fighter League, a team-based competition that started in August, but was notably absent due to the aforementioned health problems that cropped up during the Esports World Cup.
On October 22, both Kakeru and his team, ZETA Division, announced that he had officially retired from competitive fighting games for the foreseeable future, revealing that he is struggling with neurological dysfunction.
“I have decided to retire from my activities as an esports player,” Kakeru wrote in a post on X.
“Approximately two months have passed since the sudden suspension of activities.During this time, I sincerely apologize from the bottom of my heart for causing you all great worry and inconvenience without being able to report the detailed situation.
“The ‘neural dysfunction,’ which was the reason for the suspension of activities, continued, making it difficult to continue competing as a player.”
Neurological dysfunction is defined as a condition where the brain has issues sending and receiving information from the body. It can cause a wide array of symptoms depending on its severity, including weakness, coordination problems, muscle spasms, headaches, and even seizures.
Kakeru has not given any further information about the situation at the time of writing. The fighting game community has rallied behind him in the wake of this distressing news, celebrating his achievements and the undeniable mark he’s made on the scene in Street Fighter 6’s relatively short lifetime so far.
As laid out by Liquipedia FGC administrator ‘incross,’ Kakeru is currently the highest-earning Street Fighter 6 player with an 80% winrate in tournament sets — meaning he rarely takes a loss in professional competition.
In fact, out of the majority of major events he’s entered, he’s gotten to the Top 8 and beyond, making him one of the game’s strongest players. Fans and fellow competitors are hopeful he’ll recover soon and return to the stage even stronger than before.
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