It’s no secret that North America struggles in almost every esport. As competitive gaming has taken the global stage, the region has been left behind. This makes the story of fighting game heavyweights, NoahTheProdigy and KingReyJr, an anomaly.
These NA prodigies were competing in tournaments against adults when they were still in elementary school. Both also grew up as one of three siblings, with their fathers getting as involved as they could to help them achieve their dreams despite trying to raise two other children at the same time.
In their respective fighting games, they’re carrying NA on their back as full-time pro players, managing to turn fighting games into their job before they turned 20.
NoahTheProdigy had the highest NA placement at both Capcom Cup 11 and EWC for Street Fighter 6, and KingReyJr is the highest ranked NA player on the Tekken 8’s 2025 World Tour. They’re changing the storyline of their whole region.
But, after sitting down with and talking to them, it’s clear that there’s a lot more separating these two than the game they compete in. Just because they both grew up in the fighting game community doesn’t mean they have the same story.
NoahTheProdigy decided being a Street Fighter pro was the only option
NoahTheProdigy has been making headlines since he was in grade school. Entering his first tournament at seven years old, he’s been competing for over a decade. And, according to him, being a Street Fighter pro was his only plan. He wouldn’t have accepted anything else.
“I never had a backup plan. This is 100%. If you have a backup plan, that means your plan A isn’t good enough and you’re not confident enough,” he said.
“Only b*tches give up. If you give up, you’re a b*tch.”
Noah’s approach is a brazen one, and one that rarely works out in esports. No backup plans, no compromises, just a full commitment to competing and getting better. But rarely doesn’t necessarily mean never.
His father fully supported him on this journey, encouraging him to focus less on school and more on Street Fighter.
Instead of homework, Noah was studying the Street Fighter GOATs. His father Moises encouraged him to chase his dreams and never give up on them, no matter what anyone told him.
“I explained to [Noah] ‘There’s gonna be crowds yelling and all that and all you do is tune ’em out and just focus.’ You just have to teach your kid what’s right, wrong. Noah, when he loses, you know what I say to him? ‘This is what it’s called, son. You take a licking and keep on ticking,’” Moises said in an interview with Giant Bomb all the way back in 2011.
NoahTheProdigyNoah’s father got a custom-printed shirt just to cheer his son on at tournaments when he was younger
Even before esports was a feasible career path, Noah’s father supported him. When it did become a real possibility, his father supported him even more, buying him a new PC setup during 2020’s lockdowns so he had a good setup to play on and make content.
Moises’ never-back-down mentality stuck with Noah, even through harder times when he had to work whatever job he could get to stay afloat and prove he was serious about Street Fighter.
“I was working some sh*tty-ass jobs, I ain’t gonna lie. But I always knew that it was gonna work out.”
From there, Noah grinded until he finally got signed with Twisted Minds in 2024 and was able to turn his dream into a full-time job at 19. Now, he’s trying to find out how to put North America on top of Street Fighter.
“I wouldn’t say I’m the best. This business is just hard. It’s hard to win. I mean, Japan is so strong, I think as of right now they’re just better than us. They won Street Fighter League. They placed way higher than us in the Esports World Cup. They won Capcom Cup,” Noah explained.
“America has an ego, and they don’t know how to control it. That’s why we don’t get better.”
Though Noah talks a lot of trash and regularly calls people out, he tries to keep things surface-level and focus his criticisms on his and his competitors’ shared profession, Street Fighter. The trash talk is just part of his personality, and he’s a lot nicer in person than you’d think from scrolling his Twitter timeline.
Noah cheering on some Street Fighter players between his pools matches at Combo Breaker 2025“I’m a really nice guy. I only talk sh*t on Twitter because it’s full of b*tches. I mean, they don’t understand me because, like, they have college tuitions set up. They don’t understand my background and what I came from,” he explained.
While Noah has ambitions of winning the biggest events in the world, he already feels a deep sense of satisfaction in what he’s been able to achieve and using his skills to uplift himself, his family, and his community.
“I’m already a legend in life with where I come from and where I’ve been. If I start losing now, I’m still a legend in my hood. That’s all I care about.”
KingReyJr was making reads in Tekken before he could read books
KingReyJr was competing in tournaments even earlier than Noah was, going to his first Tekken tournament when he was five. However, his journey started even earlier, at only two and a half years old, when his father noticed something truly special.
KingReySr, Rey’s father, would host Tekken 5 sessions in his home, and Junior would pull up a chair and watch. He was barely old enough to speak but was already analyzing the game deeper than anyone thought.
KingReySr recording his son’s match against E1P1C, one of Chicago’s best Tekken players, at Scrims Gaming CenterOlder Tekken titles have a joke character called Mokujin that mimics the moves of a random character on the roster, and that moveset changes every single round. The challenge is figuring out which character you got stuck with. In the case of the original Tekken 5, it would have been 32 different characters.
Before he was even in Kindergarten, KingReyJr could figure out who around 80% of the cast was from their animations alone.
“Mokujin popped up on the screen, he started moving, and Junior pointed at the screen,” KingReySr told me. “He said, ‘That’s Steve Fox!’ We were blown away with the fact that he knew who it was just based on the movement. I had never sat down and taught him the names of the characters.”
KingReySr took this as a sign that he had to teach his son how to play Tekken, that there was talent there he wanted to refine. He then entered his son in his very first tournament at five years old. Now, he’s a world-class player at just 19.
After years of dedication, competing full-time in Tekken has become KingReyJr’s first real job.
“Never worked a ‘legitimate’ job. Vitality is the first official job I’ve actually had,” Rey told me. Even at 19, he’s got more time under his belt than most fighting game pros.
“I’ve just grown into it, I was born into this and raised in it. I’ve been a part of the FGC for 14, going on 15 years, I was literally molded and shaped by it,” KingReyJr explained.
But, unlike Noah’s parents, having good grades was a must for Rey Sr. The moment KingReyJr’s grades dropped, Tekken was over. And even then, he had to prove he was still putting effort into improving in the game, especially considering his dad was paying for him to travel worldwide.
“I’ve always seen it as an investment in [my son’s] future. Granted, there always needed to be things in place like keeping his grades up, doing well in school,” Rey’s father explained. “And then, on top of that, showing that he’s always trying to improve. It didn’t make sense for me to put him in events where he wasn’t continually trying to improve his game and get better.”
I asked KingReyJr if he felt like being in the FGC changed his life, but he doesn’t really know of any other way of living. He’s been in the FGC from the very beginning.
“I kind of don’t know anything else. I was growing in the FGC my whole life. This is kind of the only thing that I do know. But, I mean, I’m happy with where I came from, happy with how I grew up to be where I am today,” he explained.
“I’ve been ready for something like this for what feels like my whole life. Even at VS Fighting 2024 – cause that was my first time making it to Top 8 at a big tournament ever – I still managed to get second.”
VS Fighting is one of Europe’s biggest competitions, and KingReyJr’s 2024 performance is likely a big part of what landed him his sponsorship with Vitality. A North American player demolishing a European major was almost unheard of at the time, especially since Fergus, one of Europe’s best competitors, plays the same character as Rey.
I told him I’d expect players over there to know how to play against him because of that, and Rey had this to say in reply:
“They don’t know how to play against me.”
KingReyJr and NoahTheProdigy may have a similar background, but they’re two very different people. However, there are two distinct similarities: Both men worked incredibly hard to get where they are, and their fathers did everything they could to support that journey. There’s no “correct” way to be a parent, but this is about as close as it gets.
The next best fighting game players in the world are probably hitting their first Evo this year thanks to months of begging their parents to pay for it.
NoahTheProdigy’s journey with Street Fighter and KingReyJr’s journey with Tekken have not only given them careers most people can only dream about, but these experiences have also molded them into men their fathers can be proud of.
