The Tekken World Tour 2025 Finals are almost upon us. And, though Tekken fans are excited to see the world’s best players duke it out in Sweden, there’s a massive cheating controversy surrounding a few of the players who qualified.

The Tekken World Tour tries to be a truly global affair. While there are the typical big events like Evo, Combo Breaker, CEO, and many others, the TWT allows for smaller tournament organizers to run what’s called a Dojo event.

These Dojos don’t count for nearly as many global points as big events, but those points still matter. And, if you manage to get the most points in your region, it’s a free ticket to the TWT Finals. While this is a great way to highlight talent around the world, it’s also allegedly being manipulated by a select few players to let them qualify.

There’s a great deal of evidence against Raef “Raef” Alturkistani, Adrian “Allidar” Cabradilla, and Noel “Noel” Eduardo in this regard, with droves of potentially fake players signing up for tournaments to get to 96 players and cash in on the max amount of Dojo points.

How Could These Tekken 8 Players be Cheating?

To lay out how these players may be manipulating the system and using Dojos to gain more points, it’s important to establish how players can qualify.

There are three ways to qualify for the TWT Finals: Either you place high on the global leaderboard and secure a top 20 spot, place at the top of your region, or win the single slot allotted for the last chance qualifier, an open-bracket tournament that gives anyone the chance to make it in.

Getting high placement on the global leaderboard is usually done by winning Master or Master+ events, tournaments that are tightly run and regulated. However, when it comes to regional Dojos, things get murky.

96 players are required to get full Dojo points, but Bandai Namco’s moderation of these players is loose to say the least. The only requirement is that these players show up on the start.gg page as registered players. Anyone could make an account and sign up for a tournament, and the results are recorded by organizers on-site. It’s essentially a trust system.

In the case of Allidar, tournaments he helped organize had dozens of people who DQed. But, in some cases, players would DQ in the upper bracket, play a match in the lower bracket, and then lose via disqualification. The timelines for many players’ runs don’t add up.

The Guam Esports Federation responded to these allegations, removing Allidar from the organizing team for tournaments in response to the backlash. However, they also claimed they had 60+ players show up for Tekken. And, while that’s a high number for such a small island, it’s also nowhere near the 100+ claimed entrants at several events that allowed Allidar to qualify.

Despite the GESF acknowledging that having Allidar as one of the organizers could compromise competitive integrity, the TWT points he gained were only bumped down a bit, with an 104 person tournament getting knocked to a 64+ Dojo. Meanwhile, a quick glance at the room they were playing in on stream shows the small room they compete in can’t even hold 64 people. 

Additionally, there are public Discord screenshots where Allidar speaks about a teacher convincing 40 of their students to sign up who weren’t really experienced with Tekken, essentially stacking the deck in his favor and inflating the number of participants.

As a result, Allidar ended the season only 30 points ahead of Australian player William “Bobby” Bondarenko’s point total on the regional leaderboard. If any of the tournaments Allidar participated in were only 48+ or 32+ dojos instead, Bobby would have qualified. To say the Australian Tekken community is angry about this would be an understatement.

“It’s so disheartening to see Bandai Namco be provided with irrefutable evidence of cheated results and still reward the cheaters. I’ve reached out to Bandai Namco and to the TWT support Discord, only to be ignored. Here’s to hoping next season is better,” Bobby said on X.

It's so disheartening to see Bandai Namco be provided with irrefutable evidence of cheated results and still reward the cheaters. I've reached out to Bandai Namco and to the TWT support discord only to be ignored. Here's to hoping next season is better@BNEesports @y_esports https://t.co/NCpfGvPOJL

— Bobby (@BobbyBadinga) January 5, 2026

Saudi pro Raef is being called out for similar reasons, with tournaments in Saudi Arabia having several names that appear to be AI-generated. These accounts were made just before the November 4 tournament and can be seen on this bracket. Many of those “players” have attended no other tournaments, either.

Additionally, the stream VoDs were supposed to be on Raef’s Twitch channel, but the VoDs have been deleted, and no video footage of this tournament currently exists. Or, if it does, it hasn’t been supplied via the proper channels and can’t be reviewed. The same is true of several other dojos he’s participated in but still has points for on the TWT website despite the rules explicitly stating a VoD has to exist for the result to be valid.

The points Raef gained here pushed him up the global leaderboard enough to hit the top 20, potentially knocking out North American pro Shadow20z. He and other NA players have been vocal about the suspicious nature of these tournaments, with someone who gathered evidence on Raef’s tournament runs calling it “blatant cheating.”

I am raising serious concerns regarding Raef’s Tekken Dojo events and their impact on TWT qualification. Upon examination, it is obvious that he heavily inflated the numbers leading to a maximum number of points.

During Raef’s Jeddah Dojo 4, a large number of start gg accounts… pic.twitter.com/j6QxAdvXk2

— Blckpanther (@Blckpanthe8069) January 2, 2026

Noel, meanwhile, has an entire organization backing him. Hadouken Dojo Gaming runs the largest tournaments in Bolivia, attracting players from far and wide to some of the biggest events in South America. And it just so happens that almost every player at these massive events in Bolivia is a member of Hadouken Dojo Gaming.

There are more players representing this org than not in several tournaments, with some people alleging that so many players being associated with the organization frees them up to fudge the numbers and inflate tournament sign-up numbers.

For instance, at an event, Noel won the maximum amount of 150 Dojo points, and 14 of the top 16 players were HDG members, and VoDs for the early parts of the tournament are unavailable. Only footage of the Top 16 still exists.

And while not every match will be livestreamed, so many matches missing from the lower part of the bracket have people suspicious. Noel’s case is the least egregious of the three, though Tekken fans have some valid concerns about one organization controlling so much of the region. With them running events and having so many players signed, it’s basically up to them who qualifies from Americas 3.

The unfortunate thing is that Allidar, Raef, and Noel are all very strong Tekken players. But, with Tekken 8’s community getting ravaged by general displeasure with Season 2, it’s been hard for organizers to fill tournaments. This is a phenomenon PhiDX spoke to us about, with some locals losing up to 75% of their local players almost overnight.

It would be no surprise for strong players to tip the scales in their favor a little by inflating numbers and making their locals look bigger so they can make it to the finals.

Bandai Namco has yet to respond to community backlash against these players qualifying for the Tekken World Tour Finals.