Why money matching is stupid

The latest thing in Street Fighter seems to be money matches. Whereas the B tournaments and the first few Evos did not have many money matches, and the ones that were had were personal and not remembered, these days money matches are just as important, if not more so, than tournaments. It has gotten to the point where the rejoinder for any strategy talk that one disagrees with is "bet it, mm any amount".

Hell, people try to get into money matches these days over girls. Shit's retarded.

Honestly, I can kind of see why money matches are popular. In tournaments, the chances that you'll fight the person you have beef with is pretty low, even if you're a top player. Luck may put the guy you have beef with into a bracket against some other top player, and you can't settle your hash. With a money match, you are guaranteed a match against the person for something valuable.

However, this is where things start to get stupid.

When people say "bet it, mm any amount", onlookers start to toss in their own money, and the amounts become ridiculous. The stress becomes massive. And it's generally impossible for people to play their best. There are exceptions - the infamous Clockw0rk vs. Duc Jr. matchups in MvC2 are a good showing of where a money match actually proved something to the general public.

But did it prove something to Duc Jr.? He's still talking incredible amounts of shit. And that's why money matches are stupid. You can only justify them in two ways. Either you think they're to shut the loser up - in which case they verifiably fail at doing that. The loser may be shamed into shutting up, but on the other hand, the loser may possess no shame and keep on talking, and rallying the shameless of the group to his side.

Or, you can say "it's just a game, we're just fucking around". In which case, I can only respond with one thing: Money doesn't grow on trees. If you get off on risk, go play poker or something.