Thaiger Uppercut 2025 was always going to be exciting, as it’s the final Master-tier tournament of the year for Tekken 8, and the last opportunity for the players to earn a chunk of TWT points. With the all-Pakistani finals between Nauman “Numan Ch” Chaudhry and Hafiz Tanveer, Arslan “Arslan Ash” Siddique’s mediocre performance, and Fergus McGee locking in the final spot, it ended up delivering fully.
Hosted in Thailand from Nov. 28 to 30, it featured over 200 entrants in Tekken 8, with a bracket full of killers from Pakistan, Korea, Japan, Europe, and Southeast Asia. In the end, almost half of the top 8 were from Pakistan, and that’s with Arslan Ash crashing out in an uncharacteristic manner.
Numan Ch: New name in Pakistani dominance
There’s really not much doubt nowadays about the strongest Tekken 8 region: it’s Pakistan, by some margin. We’re used to seeing Arslan Ash, Atif “ATIF” Ijaz, and Imran Khan win, though the latter has had somewhat of a slump recently. But even the second echelon of players, like Farzeen, THE JON, Hafiz Tanveer, Usama Abbasi, Qasim Meer, Dawood Sikandar, can, on their day, dominate any given event.
And it was exactly Numan Ch’s day, who ran the whole tournament with Steve Fox. Numan Ch only really made his name known this year by winning the Esports World Cup 2025 Last Chance Qualifier, even though he has beaten even Arslan Ash in the past.
He comfortably won his pools, placing over JoKa and Knee, and then beat two Koreans, qudans and LowHigh to make it into the top 8. There, he comfortably beat Fergus, who’s having one of the best seasons of his career, and had a super close call vs. his compatriot Hafiz Tanveer in the winners final, going down 0-2 and reverse sweeping him after.
His grand final opponent was the very same Hafiz Tanveer, who left no chance to Alexandre “AK” Laverez in the losers. Building on this momentum, Hafiz Tanveer quite easily beat Numan Ch to reset the bracket 3-1. But ultimately, this wasn’t enough: Numan Ch paid him back with the same score and became the champion of Thaiger Uppercut 2025.
Thaiger Uppercut 2025 Top 8:
- Numan Ch – $3,036.40
- Hafiz Tanveer – $1,265.17
- AK – $759.10
- THE JON – $404.85
- PINYA – $202.43
- Fergus – $202.43
- KingReyJr – $101.21
- ATIF – $101.21
What happens next: Malmö, Last Chance Qualifier, and the Finals
Unfortunately for Numan Ch, this victory wasn’t enough to secure him a spot at the Tekken World Tour Finals, as his season-long results weren’t good enough. Who did secure a TWT Finals participation in Tekken 8 was Fergus. The Irish Asuka main has had a stellar second half of the season, getting third at Evo France prior to his Thaiger Uppercut top 6. He overtook Marquis “Shadow 20z” Jordan by 30 points and will be going to Malmö next year.
The structure for this season is simple on paper, but convoluted if you don’t pay attention:
- The top 20 players from the Global Leaderboard qualify.
- 15 players from each Regional Leaderboard also qualify.
- 1 final spot goes to the winner of the Last Chance Qualifier (LCQ).
All of them will meet at Slagthuset Malmö in Sweden for the TWT 2025 Global Finals, running from Jan. 29 to Feb. 1, 2026. The LCQ for the event is an open-entry, double-elimination bracket where only one player survives to join the main event.
Here are all the Global Leaderboard Tekken World Tour Finals participants:
- Mulgold – 2820 points
- Arslan Ash – 2770 points
- ATIF – 2271 points
- Farzeen – 2081 points
- Knee – 1880 points
- LowHigh – 1870 points
- JeonDDing – 1850 points
- ULSAN – 1730 points
- chikurin – 1570 points
- Rangchu – 1550 points
- EDGE – 1540 points
- Raef – 1530 points
- Gosain – 1510 points
- JDCR – 1470 points
- Tibetano – 1395 points
- KingReyJr – 1360 points
- THE JON – 1280 points
- Eddy – 1280 points
- Mangja – 1260 points
- Fergus – 1260 points
The list of players from the regional leaderboards, pending any visa or other issues, is as follows:
Japan:
- NOBI
Korea:
- Breadman
Pakistan:
- Usama Abbasi
Asia 1 (Central & South Asia):
- DChingiz
Asia 2 (Southeast Asia):
- RTM
Asia 3 (Philippines, East Asia):
- RGN
Americas 1 (North America):
- Victeemo
Americas 2 (Central America):
- Heisenberg
Americas 3 (South America):
- Noel
Europe 1 (West Europe):
- Hexmark
Europe 2 (East Europe):
- Kwstakis
MEA 1 (West Africa):
- Shaoling
MEA 2 (South Africa):
- Yondaime
MEA 3 (North & East Africa, Middle East):
- Musashi
Oceania:
- Allidar
Now there’s only one question left for Malmö: who’s going to survive the LCQ meat grinder to become the final participant?
