Tekken savant Arslan Ash has been stirring the pot with his comments regarding the current state of the game’s character balance, striking a nerve with fellow pro Knee in an unexpected rivalry.
The debate flared up a couple of weeks before Evo 2025. Korean Tekken player Knee has been on a tear defending Bryan, a character largely considered by many in the community to be one of the best in the game right now, and with whom he won Evo Japan earlier this year.
Others in the scene — including five-time Evo champion Arslan Ash, in particular — aren’t happy with how blatantly top-tier Bryan is at present. While the conversation has been simmering for a hot minute, things escalated when Arslan uploaded a video of other pro players agreeing with him that Bryan is top three in the current meta.
Knee was quick to hit back, suggesting a first-to-ten set against Ash, wherein Ash would play Bryan, while he would use Nina. “The truth is, you just can’t play Bryan. You can’t handle him. That’s why you’re busy playing politics, asking for nerfs,” Knee boasted.
Ash agreed, setting a date for sometime in 2026 for a possible “Korea vs Pakistan” event. Knee, however, accused Ash of ducking him by planning a date so far in the future rather than running the set at Evo. That’s when Justin Wong stepped in, asking: “How much do you think it would take to make Knee vs Arslan happen?”
Arslan set the price at $20K — but when Justin asked to confirm the “winner takes all” money match, Arslan challenged him to fund it, prompting another round of confusion and criticism from the community.
With that setup out of the way, here’s what Arslan had to say about the ongoing beef.
Arslan addresses his viral ‘Bryan top 3’ debate with Knee
Thus far, no official FT10 has been set up between the two players, and their feud continues to simmer just beneath the surface as Evo gets underway. We got the chance to ask Arslan about the discussion and how he feels about the fighting game community’s response to it.
“ For me, I don’t downplay my character,” he told us. “If I’m playing Anna right now, I’ll always say that she’s top-tier, and that’s why I’m playing her. But the Bryan mains, they are like… crazy.
“So you have me, and I have a good number of followers. And then you have Knee, and he also has a good amount of followers. So if I say something against his character or against him, all of his audience will start saying bad things about me. If I say Bryan’s top-tier, I think [Knee] loves to downplay. I don’t know what the reason is.
“We are allowed to say anything we want, right? If you think I don’t like apples, for instance — yeah, that’s fine. If I say Bryan is top-tier, that should be fine. You cannot say, ‘No, you have to play this character to say if they’re top-tier or not.’ It’s the same thing that I said on Twitter: You don’t have to be a chef to say the food is bad. You can see that the character is broken. That character won Evo Japan. [Knee] thinks I am doing politics, that I’m getting his character nerfed by posting a lot, but that character should get nerfed more and more.”
Despite the beef, Arslan has no real-life feud with his fellow fighting game player. He simply feels that they each have different opinions of the game, saying it isn’t something that affects their relationship in the real world.
“I like him as a person,” he said. “But when it comes to the game, when it comes to Tekken, we have different opinions. But he’s really nice. Whenever I meet him, we talk a lot about the game and other things, but our mentality has always been different about the character choices or whatever in Tekken.”
Arslan Ash wants Tekken 8 devs to speed up balance patches
It’s safe to say that Arslan has beef with the speed of Tekken’s balance patches, though. The game’s development team has been transparent about delaying these patches to avoid impacting major tournaments like Evo — and while he’s understanding of this, Arslan thinks Bandai could still meet competitors halfway.
“ I am not a developer, but I feel like if you have a very big franchise like Tekken, you should have a bigger team balancing the whole thing,” he argued. “I think it shouldn’t take too much time for you to balance.
“The game is going in the right direction. Every patch is getting better and better, but they can make it faster. As a competitor, it’s our duty to learn and adapt. But they also cannot introduce a bigger patch just two weeks before a big tournament, so it kinda makes sense, but they can do it faster, right?”
For now, the FGC is waiting with bated breath for the ultimate culmination of Arslan and Knee’s feud — but it’s anyone’s guess as to whether or not they’ll actually run the set to determine whether or not Bryan is truly as top-tier as he’s made out to be.
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