Why Chile Keeps Producing Fighting Game Prodigies, and Why the Newest One Is Only 10

There's a 10-year-old in Chile named Lucas who is already making top eights in Street Fighter tournaments against grown players from across Latin America. Normally that would be the entire story, but when I looked at where he was from, I realised Chile has done this before.

One Chilean player won EVO at 17. Another reached the grand finals of Capcom Cup at 15. Then another 15-year-old won Street Fighter at the Esports World Cup. Now the kid getting attention is 10. So what is going on in Chile? That's what I wanted to find out.

At first I thought I had the obvious answer. Chile has a fighting game academy built specifically around developing young players. That academy does exist, but there's one problem: it came after all of these players, which meant whatever was causing this had already been happening for years. When I traced it back, the story didn't begin with an esports organisation, a professional coach or some secret Chilean training method. It started with a father colouring the buttons on a Nintendo 64 controller so his sons could play Mortal Kombat.

The Martinez twins started on Mortal Kombat at around 3 years old

Matias "ScorpionProcs" Martinez and his brother Nicolas Martinez were around 3 years old when their father Patricio introduced them to Mortal Kombat. At that age nobody was thinking about tournaments. They were just little kids playing a game their dad liked. When the family eventually got a Nintendo 64, Patricio marked the buttons with different colours so his sons would know what to press.

From there, the brothers played each other constantly. Whenever ScorpionProcs learned something new, Nicolas had to figure out how to deal with it. Then Nicolas would find the answer and force his brother to adjust. The strange part was that neither of them really knew how good they were, because most of the evidence came from playing the same person over and over again.

At 13 they finally tested it against everybody else by entering a Mortal Kombat X tournament. ScorpionProcs won and Nicolas finished third. For the first time, they knew that what they had developed at home worked against people outside of it.

ScorpionProcs and Nicolas met in the CEO grand final, then ScorpionProcs won EVO at 17

Their practice became more serious after that first tournament. A normal day could mean around three hours of training, and Nicolas has said that their sessions against each other sometimes went much longer. Eventually, though, getting better wasn't enough. They needed to leave Chile.

When CEO gave them that opportunity in 2021, Patricio took vacation from work and travelled with them. The trip was paid for with a combination of his savings and the money the brothers had already earned competing. They were 16 years old. After flying all the way to the United States, the last two players left in the Mortal Kombat 11 tournament were the same two people who had spent their childhood fighting each other at home. ScorpionProcs beat Nicolas in the grand final.

A year later, ScorpionProcs won Mortal Kombat 11 at EVO at the age of 17, while Nicolas finished third. At that point you could explain the whole thing pretty easily: maybe one family in Chile just happened to produce two extraordinarily talented players. But then Street Fighter found its own.

Blaz had a father studying Street Fighter matchups alongside him

By the time most international Street Fighter fans learned the name Blaz, people in Chile had already been watching him for years. His father wasn't just the person getting him to tournaments. He learned enough Street Fighter to actually help. A figure from the esports organisation working with Blaz has described his father as someone who could work through matchups with his son and help him figure out what needed to change. His father was even seen travelling internationally with Blaz and talking about what they were trying to accomplish while his son was still only 15.

The player who would later win the Esports World Cup came through a completely different route. He spent time around older Chilean players, watching them in dojos before eventually sitting down to play them himself. Blaz had a father studying the game alongside him; his peer had experienced competitors willing to let him into their environment early. Both got access to serious fighting games long before most people would have expected much from them.

By early 2024, Chile was already getting a preview of where that could lead. At Never Give Up, Blaz won Street Fighter 6 at 14 years old, and his future Esports World Cup winning peer finished fourth. At the same event, ScorpionProcs and Nicolas took the top two spots in Mortal Kombat 1. People inside Chile started referring to these players as the golden generation. What's interesting now is how early they said it. Blaz hadn't reached Capcom Cup grand finals, and his peer hadn't won the Esports World Cup. People close to them were using that name before the results made it seem obvious. So I started looking at what kind of fighting game scene these kids had walked into.

Chile's established scene had already learned what happens when local stars go abroad

Chile already had a serious fighting game scene long before any of these kids became famous. Kane Blueriver had won EVO in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Santiago had dedicated fighting game spaces and an arcade culture that stretched back decades. Chilean organisers had also spent years building tournaments and finding ways to get their strongest players overseas.

By the time Blaz and his peer started competing, the people around them already understood what happened when somebody who dominated locally finally met international competition. They'd seen players travel, come home with holes exposed in their game, make adjustments and try again. The younger players still had to develop the skills, but they were surrounded by people who had already learned lessons that used to require leaving the country to discover. They had also grown up knowing that a Chilean player could win EVO, because there was already proof.

I thought that was probably enough to explain it: an established scene had accumulated decades of experience, and the kids arriving afterwards benefited from it. But the account from the organisation behind Blaz wasn't nearly that clean.

Support for Chile's young players came from a small group, not the whole scene

That same organisation figure has pushed back against the idea that Chile's Street Fighter scene was naturally welcoming to children. According to him, younger players weren't always treated particularly well in the beginning, and some of that attitude still exists. A lot of the support that did emerge came from a much smaller group of people putting their own time and money behind these kids.

An experienced scene could have all the knowledge in the world and still be useless to a 12-year-old if nobody was willing to share it with him. The Martinez twins had Patricio. Blaz had his father. His peer had older competitors willing to sit down and play him seriously. None of them could make these kids talented, but they could give that talent a chance to go somewhere.

By late 2024, the organisation was already talking publicly about where it wanted this to lead. The goal was to develop players like Blaz and his peer into world class competitors by the time they were 18. That was the plan. "The kids just ruined the schedule."

Blaz finished second at Capcom Cup 11 at 15, then his peer won the Esports World Cup

Blaz was 15 when he reached Capcom Cup 11, and he didn't go there just to say he'd made it. He went undefeated through his group before Kakeru sent him to the losers side. From there, his run went through Shuto, NoahTheProdigy and Angry Bird, among others, before taking him all the way back to Kakeru in the grand finals. Kakeru beat him again, but Blaz finished second in the world.

There's an interview from around that period in which Tokido was talking with Blaz while his father sat right beside him. It's a striking image when you know the story: the kid who had suddenly become one of the best Street Fighter players on Earth, sitting next to the father who had been studying matchups with him before most of the world knew his name.

Then his peer caught up. At 15 years old, he qualified for Street Fighter 6 at the Esports World Cup. He made it through MenaRD and Yamaguchi before facing Hibiki in the grand finals, and won 5 to 2. A few years earlier, he had been the kid hanging around experienced players in Chilean dojos. Now he had won one of the biggest Street Fighter tournaments in the world. And back in Chile, the players who started this entire story weren't done yet.

The Mortal Kombat twins filled Chile's Street Fighter 6 top four alongside Blaz

It would be easy to separate these players into generations, with ScorpionProcs and Nicolas as the Mortal Kombat prodigies and Blaz and his peer as the Street Fighter kids who came after them. Except the twins started playing Street Fighter 6 too. At the first Chile World Warrior event of the 2026 season, ScorpionProcs made it all the way to the grand finals against Blaz. Blaz won.

By World Warrior number four, though, ScorpionProcs was the one on top. Blaz finished second, the Esports World Cup champion was third and Nicolas was fourth. The four players I'd been following across two different games had ended up occupying the entire top four of the same Street Fighter tournament.

A player can reach Capcom Cup grand finals at 15, come home, and still have an EVO champion from Mortal Kombat learning his game well enough to challenge him. Blaz and his peer get someone who has already spent his teenage years learning how to win on major stages, and Nicolas is still right there too. The rivalry that once existed between two brothers inside one house has grown into something much larger. Chile's strongest young players don't have to wait for the next international trip to find someone capable of exposing a weakness. Some of those players are already in the next bracket.

Chile's youth academy was built after the first prodigies succeeded

Only after all of this do we get the thing I expected to find at the beginning: a youth development program. The academy works with fighting game players between 12 and 18 years old, and it covers more than matchups and mechanics. Younger competitors work on handling tournament pressure, controlling frustration and preparing for situations they'll face if competition eventually takes them outside Chile. Even learning English is part of the program.

Years earlier, Patricio had to figure out how to get two teenage sons from Chile to a major in the United States once the opportunities suddenly appeared. Now people are preparing young players for the possibility that these opportunities might come before they even need them. The academy didn't create Chile's first wave of prodigies. It was built after people had already watched them succeed, when there were enough examples to study. The question was no longer whether a kid from Chile could become world class. It was whether some of the things that helped those kids get there could be taught deliberately.

Lucas is beginning in a very different place from where the Martinez twins began

And now there's Lucas. He's 10 years old and has already made multiple top eights in Street Fighter 6. Maybe he eventually becomes another champion. Maybe this is simply the beginning of a good player whose story goes somewhere completely different. At 10 years old, nobody knows.

But compare where he's beginning to where ScorpionProcs and Nicolas began. The twins entered their first tournament because they genuinely didn't know how good they were outside their own house. Lucas is entering a Chilean scene that has already watched children develop into international champions. The people around him have seen ScorpionProcs win EVO at 17, Blaz reach Capcom Cup grand finals at 15, and another 15-year-old win the Esports World Cup. Those aren't stories from 20 years ago. Those players are still competing.

That's probably the biggest change across the entire timeline: Chile has gotten faster at recognising what exceptional young talent looks like. The first examples had to prove the possibility. Now the scene has seen it happen enough times that a 10-year-old making serious tournament runs gets noticed immediately. In 2024 they called these players the golden generation, a phrase that usually describes one special group that eventually gives way to whatever comes next. But Chile hasn't reached that point yet. The players who earned the name are still competing, and there's already another kid behind them. Maybe the question isn't why Chile keeps producing prodigies, but how early it is learning to recognise the next one. "And right now the answer is 10."

When a kid gets this good this young, what matters most: the player, the parents supporting them, or the competition they're surrounded by?