From 513th at Evo Japan to Esports World Cup Champion: Zubair's Tekken Run Was Seven Years in the Making

On August 8th, 2026, Zubair sat across from LowHigh in the grand finals of the Esports World Cup, and the reigning Tekken World Tour champion was down four games to zero. Only a few months earlier, Zubair had finished 513th at Evo Japan, yet here he was, one game away from an Esports World Cup championship and $300,000.

To most people following the event, Zubair looked like he had come out of nowhere. But buried on YouTube was an old Pakistani broadcast from seven years earlier, in which Zubair sat across from Arslan Ash for a first to 20. What happened there changes how you look at his entire EWC run.

Zubair's early record hides under other names

If you try to research Zubair's early tournament history, the trail goes cold surprisingly fast. Part of the reason is that Zubair wasn't always the name appearing on brackets. Older Pakistani records usually call him Zubair Bablu, and sometimes Zubair Butt. Once you start searching those names instead, a much longer history starts to appear.

One of the earliest tournament sets I could verify comes from an event in 2019, where Zubair was already competing with characters like Paul. Later that year, he entered a 184 player tournament in Pakistan with a field that included Arslan Ash, Awais Honey, Bilal and Atif, among others. Zubair finished fifth.

By itself, fifth place might not jump off the page. But this was a field drawn from a Pakistani scene that was already producing some of the strongest Tekken players anywhere. Later that year, Knee traveled from Korea to Pakistan to play some of that talent for himself, and Zubair was one of the players he faced. Knee won their first to five, five games to three, with Zubair using Paul against Knee's Steve. It was a respectable showing.

Zubair beat Arslan Ash 20 to 12 in a 2019 first to 20

A few days later, Zubair sat down with Arslan Ash for something much longer, a first to 20, and that set is the real sign of what Zubair was capable of. You have to remember who Arslan Ash was at this point. This was late 2019, after he had already won Evo Japan and Evo Vegas, and by then there was no question that Arslan was one of the best Tekken players in the world.

A first to 20 is very different from beating somebody in a normal tournament set. In a short set, an upset can happen before the other player has enough time to figure out what is going on. Maybe they start slowly. Maybe there is something about the matchup they weren't ready for. Or maybe they simply didn't adjust quickly enough. A first to 20 gives you time to work through all of that: game after game to learn the other player's habits, change your approach, and find answers to whatever keeps beating you.

Arslan played Kazumi, and this wasn't a set Arslan could lose before he had time to respond. But when the set ended, Zubair was still eight games ahead, 20 to 12. One long set isn't enough to say Zubair was better than Arslan in 2019. What it does show is that Zubair beat that version of Arslan over a format that gave both players plenty of time to adapt.

A strong Pakistani scene made it hard for Zubair to stand out

The strange part is what happened afterwards. A result like this showed what Zubair was capable of, but it didn't give him what Arslan had just earned by winning Evo Japan and Evo Vegas: an international resume. So when Arslan became one of the faces of Tekken, Zubair went right back into the same Pakistani scene he had come from.

That part might be why Zubair was easy to miss. The same scene that made him strong also made it difficult to stand out. Arslan was there. Atif was there. Numan and other players capable of ending your tournament were there too. Being dangerous in Pakistan didn't necessarily mean winning in Pakistan.

Zubair kept competing against that level of competition for years, but he never separated himself from the field the way Arslan eventually did internationally. Sometimes he went deep, and sometimes he didn't. Without international results to go with it, fans outside Pakistan had very little reason to know his name.

513th and 49th abroad, then three straight weekends of results at home

In 2025, the Esports World Cup Last Chance Qualifier gave him a direct path onto one of Tekken's biggest stages. There were 415 players in that tournament and only four qualification spots. Zubair finished 13th. He had gotten close, but with only four spots available, close still meant being on the outside of EWC.

When he started traveling internationally again in 2026, the results didn't suggest a breakthrough was coming. At Evo Japan, he finished 513th, and at a super tournament in Korea, he finished 49th. But when Zubair came back home, his results changed almost immediately. On July 4th, he finished second at a tournament. One week later, he won Guard Break 2. And on July 18th, he won Pakistan Tekken League stage four.

In three straight weekends, he went second, first, first, and suddenly there were two different versions of Zubair depending on where you looked. Internationally, his results were easy to ignore. Back home, he was putting together his best stretch of the year.

After the stage four victory, Zubair gave an interview about competing alongside Pakistani players who had already established themselves internationally. He openly talked about the intimidation he felt when he looked at players who had already accomplished things overseas, but said their success also motivated him. If players from the same scene could go overseas and accomplish something big, he believed maybe he could eventually do it too. He gave that interview less than two weeks before the EWC Last Chance Qualifier.

Zubair beat Arslan Ash and Numan to win the Last Chance Qualifier

Then he arrived at the Last Chance Qualifier, where 444 players were about to compete for just four EWC spots. Zubair stayed on the winners side all the way into top eight. His wins included Arslan Ash, and they put him in grand finals against another Pakistani player who knew him far better than most of the international field ever could: Numan.

Numan took the first grand final set three to two and reset the bracket. After reaching grand finals without losing, Zubair's qualification now came down to one set against someone from his own scene. Zubair took that set three to one, won the Last Chance Qualifier, and secured one of the four spots in the EWC main event.

Zubair beat Ulsan twice at EWC

His first opponent in the main event was Ulsan, who had won Tekken at EWC in 2024 and then came back and won it again in 2025. Now he was chasing a third straight championship, and his first match in 2026 came against the player who had just won his way through the Last Chance Qualifier.

Both players picked Dragunov, and Zubair took the set three to one. In his first match on the main EWC stage, the LCQ winner had beaten the man chasing a third straight title. Then Zubair was swept three to zero by his next opponent. Against Ulsan, he answered with a three to zero sweep of his own, this time using Paul, and that got him out of the group stage.

A 3 to 0 sweep of Arslan Ash tied the story back to 2019

In phase two, Zubair won his opening set three to one, and then came the matchup that tied the entire story back to 2019: Arslan Ash. Seven years earlier, Zubair and Arslan had played 32 games on an old Pakistani broadcast. Now they were playing each other at the Esports World Cup.

Their first EWC set wasn't close. Zubair swept Arslan three to zero and secured his spot in top eight. The old 2019 result now had a tournament counterpart. In the playoffs, Zubair took his quarterfinal five to three, which sent him into the semifinal and straight back to Arslan.

Zubair came back from 4 to 2 down to eliminate Arslan Ash 5 to 4

This time the format was first to five, and the rematch looked very different from the sweep. Arslan built a four to two lead, putting himself one game away from grand finals. Zubair needed to win all three remaining games to stay in the tournament.

He took the next one to make it four to three, then won again to tie the set at four games each. Arslan had been one game away from grand finals, and now the lead was gone and everything came down to one deciding game. Three games earlier, Zubair had been one loss away from elimination. Now Arslan was. Zubair completed the comeback five to four and moved one set away from becoming Esports World Cup champion. At EWC, he had now beaten Arslan twice: once in a sweep and once after coming back from down four to two.

Zubair swept LowHigh 5 to 0 in grand finals

Only one player was left. LowHigh entered the grand finals as the reigning Tekken World Tour champion and the runner-up from EWC the year before. But by then, Zubair had already beaten Ulsan and Arslan Ash. The only thing left was the championship.

Zubair took the first game, then the second, the third and the fourth. By the end of the fourth game, LowHigh still hadn't won a single game, and Zubair closed it out five to zero. As one commentator put it: "This ain't a grand finals, this an execution."

The player who had finished 513th at Evo Japan just a few months earlier was now the Esports World Cup champion. Zubair earned $250,000 for winning the tournament and another $50,000 because he had reached the championship through the LCQ.

Zubair's run only looked sudden if you started in 2026

Zubair's EWC run only looked like it came out of nowhere if you started the story in 2026. The 2019 set had already shown what he was capable of. "What changed was the stage."

After winning EWC, Zubair credited the work he had done in Pakistan and mentioned a specific friend who had practiced with him and played a pivotal role in preparing him for the tournament. He never publicly named that friend. Even at the end of Zubair's breakthrough, his own explanation pointed back to another person in Pakistan the international audience didn't know. "Arslan Ash made the world look at Pakistan. Seven years later, Zubair gave everyone a reason to look deeper."

So before the Last Chance Qualifier, what would you have called Zubair: unknown, or overlooked?