He had no sponsor, nor a team. He has, instead, two jobs, a daughter, and just a few hours every week to play.
But 31-year-old Joshua “Ghirlanda” Bianchi stole the show with his extraordinary achievement at the recent Tekken World Tour 2022 Grand Finals (TWT) competition. He ended up fourth after an impressive run which saw him beat some of the biggest names in the scene.
Indeed, he may not have won the competition but, in our view, he’s won anyway.
Speaking to Ulti Asia, Ghirlanda shared his secret prior to the 2022 TWT Grand Finals tournament. He spent most of his time studying the gameplay of opponents, especially those who qualified outside the 2022 Last Chance Qualifiers.
“I spent most of my time learning all the opponents that are already qualified without LCQ. It wasn’t bad. If I think about it, I lost only to LCQ Winner and Knee.” Ghirlanda said. “I mained Katarina in the competition because all of my original characters were not present on Tekken 7 initial release. And she is very simple to use, perfect for someone like me with bad execution.”
Despite just being a hobbyist, Ghirlanda, who hails from Italy, faced out against some strong competition on his way to the TWT 2022 Grand Finals. His dogged practise and focus paid off in November 2022, when he took the first place at the East Europe Regional Finals.
Through his signature fighter, Katarina, Ghirlanda carried on his best performance at the 2022 TWT and performed well against crowd favorites like Daichi “Nobi” Nakayama, the Pakistani regional champion Arslan “Arslan Ash” Siddique, and the reigning EVO tournament champion, Jae-min “Knee” Bae. His journey ended in fourth place when he failed to beat Sang-hyun “Jeondding” Jeon in the Losers Round Semi Finals.
He was the only ‘professional’ player to reach the 2022 TWT Grand Finals semi-finals without a backing from esports team or sponsor. And beneath that achievement, there is an inspiring backstory: he participated in the Tekken competition while working two full-time jobs and parenting a young daughter.
“I’ve been playing Tekken competitively since 2010.” said Bianchi. “I trained a lot in Italy but then moved to Bulgaria for work reasons, a week after I won the Last Chance Qualifier for TWT in 2018. Five years later, I am still in Bulgaria and became a dad in the meantime.”
Nonetheless, Ghirlanda told us that he is used to the hard way of life that he follows in carrying out his role as an office dad and professional Tekken competitions which take up a lot of time to master.
“I have two jobs. One from office, from 9.00 am to 18.00 pm, and one that I do at home during night,” he said.
“I am normally able to play once I put baby to sleep and finish all my job tasks by 23.00 pm. I then play and stream on my Twitch until 03.00/04.00 am. I sleep only 3 hours when I do so. That’s why I do it only once every two days.”
“To be able to compete like this, you need to pick your hobbies really well! I am the type of person that takes competition as hobby. So for me, Tekken is simply my hobby, aside from other multiplayers. This means that I don’t dedicate time to watch any movies or tv series, as I feel most of them to be a waste of time for me, as they don’t make me grow like compete or reading a book can do.”
Read more about Ghirlanda’s plans for the future in the second part of our interview with the Dad gamer who won.
