NoahTheProdigy, one of the world’s best Street Fighter 6 players who’s been competing since he was young, credits his fighting game success to his father telling him to completely ignore school work.
Noah’s been travelling and competing in tournaments from a very young age, making it to a Marvel vs Capcom 3 top 48 finish at Evo 2011 when he was only eight years old. Even then, he was beating grown adults and competing at an incredibly high level.
He’s only improved since then, turning into one of North America’s best Street Fighter players and a textbook example of a prodigy who managed to develop his talent into an actual career.
His secret? A supportive father, one who told him to stop doing his schoolwork and start practicing. He believed in Noah’s potential so much that he encouraged him to chase his dreams instead of going the safe route and getting a “normal” job.
NoahTheProdigy ignored school to focus on Street Fighter
It’s pretty typical for parents to encourage their kids to spend less time playing video games and more time focusing on school. In Noah’s case, though? Not so much.
He claims his father, Moises Solis, actively encouraged him to pursue the sort of life skills he’d actually use: Being really, really good at Street Fighter.
“I didn’t do school work growing up. I never did homework. My dad told me, ‘F**k school, watch Tokido and Mago,’” Noah said in an interview.
“I’d pull out homework, and my dad would ask me what I want to do in life. And I was like, ‘I want to be a firefighter,’ and he was like, ‘Be realistic, don’t you want to have fans? Don’t you want to be a superstar?’”
At that point, he admitted to wanting to be a full-time Street Fighter pro. So his father let him go for it.
“[My dad] said, ‘Alright, so f**k school, screw school, we’re not gonna do no schoolwork, throw it away.”
That isn’t the only way his father supported him, though. Noah entered his first tournament at the age of seven, but not without some help from his dad. According to a Giant Bomb interview from 2011, Moises sold the new rims on his car after losing his job just to send Noah to a tournament because he believed in him.
“I had a nice set of rims on the car, so I sold my rims and said, ‘Let’s go, let’s see what he’s got,’” he said.
“The things kids are doing nowadays… I have options here in my home. There’s reading, there’s math, there’s gaming. I can either let him go outside, smoke pot, run around with gang members – if this is what he wants to do, this is what I’ll support him in.”
Bear in mind that this is from an interview dated 2011, 13 years before Noah would get signed to a pro team. His father always believed.
NoahTheProdigyA picture of Noah around the time he started competing in fighting games
Becoming a Street Fighter pro is something very few players will ever get to do. It’s a highly competitive game and, within the FGC, getting a consistent sponsor that pays the bills and allows for you to focus on competing full-time is a luxury afforded to very few. But NoahTheProdigy is one of those players.
Not only has he placed highly in some of the world’s biggest tournaments, he’s also been sponsored by Twisted Minds for almost a year now and is a full-time competitor. Sponsorships in fighting games are fickle at best, but, considering he finished 5th at Capcom Cup 11 and has won multiple Street Fighter 6 majors, it’s safe to say Noah won’t be going anywhere soon.
