What Playing the Least Popular Street Fighter Character Taught Me About Being Mid
Dhalsim isn’t escapism. He’s a mirror.
Dhalsim is the least popular character in Street Fighter 6.
According to official statistics, he’s the least picked character, having been played in a paltry 0.83% of all ranked matches1. He makes no goddamn sense—a stretchy-limbed yoga master who breathes fire, teleports, and floats like he’s glitching through reality itself. Everyone else in the game plays more or less the same: fireball, fireball, uppercut. Dhalsim is out here doing some shamanistic nonsense that requires you to rewire your brain completely.
I tell you this not because I’m a strategic genius who saw the untapped potential in an underdog character. I recognized Dhalsim’s strengths and built a playstyle around exploiting the meta. But that would be a lie. The truth is simpler and stupider: I picked Dhalsim because he’s a goofy, bumbling weirdo who yells the word “YOGA” while…
