One of America’s top Street Fighter players, NoahTheProdigy, credits his success to his father, Moises Solis, telling a young Noah that he didn’t have to do his school work. The gamer opened up about his dad’s unique parenting strategy in a recent interview.
“I didn’t do school work growing up,” he said. “I never did homework. My dad told me, ‘Eff school, watch Tokido and Mago.’”
“I’d pull out homework, and my dad would ask me what I want to do in life,” he continued. “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?'”
NoahTheProdigy recounted that he eventually admitted to Solis his desire to be a video game pro. His father, unsurprisingly, was supportive.
“He said, ‘Alright, so, eff school, screw school. We’re not gonna do no schoolwork, throw it away.’” NoahTheProdigy reflected.
NoahTheProdigy has been a top gamer since his age was still in the single digits. When he was just eight years old, he finished in the top 48 at Evo 2011 in Marvel vs Capcom 3. Since then, he’s established himself as one of the best Street Fighter players in the country, and has won more than $50,000 because of his skills.
In 2011, Solis admitted that in order to pay for a tournament entry for NoahTheProdigy, he had to sell the rims on his car.
"The way the economy is, I lost my job," he said. “But 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.'"
In that long-ago interview, he also opened up about why he supports his son so much.
"If you look out your window, the things kids are doing nowadays...I have options here in my home," he explained. "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."