The sport of baseball is often regarded as America’s favorite pastime, but one 27-year-old Sacramento State student never gravitated towards it — he’d much rather have his Mad Catz arcade fightstick in hand.

David Davis, born and raised in Sacramento, has competed in the industry of e-sports — which is short for electronic sports and focuses on competitive video gaming as an athletic event — since 2012 and vividly remembers his first Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 fighting tournament in Elk Grove.

“I got destroyed because I thought I was the coolest kid on the block,” Davis said. “I was introduced to this environment where there’s so many people and they’re playing the same game as me.”

Davis connected immediately with fellow competitor Raymond Monsada, who attended Sac State from 2004-09 and placed in the top eight in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 world tournaments, and the pair began to train together.

“He was kind of like my mentor in that game and kind of shaped me into the player I am today,” Davis said.

Monsada, an Elk Grove native who retired from e-sports in 2013 to pursue graduate school, beat Davis in the popular fighting game an estimated 100-200 times a day during practice sets, Davis said.

“He’s very persistent,” Monsada said. “I was a top player at the time and he was really new to the scene, but he was very hungry and was willing to go to as many tournaments as possible. He was always looking for advice from other players and he would ask me a lot how to improve his gameplay, so I think that’s something that sets him apart from others.”

Although Davis is restricted in how many tournaments he can attend due to school, work and his Kappa Sigma fraternity duties, he makes up for it by seeking advice from mentor and training partner Long Nguyen, who has traveled to competitions from Canada to Costa Rica.

“I feel like he has a lot of potential — he just needs more experience in the tournament field, especially major tournaments,” Nguyen said. “Major tournaments are where you get to test yourself and see where your placement is on the field. For people to transition from a casual player to a major player is a huge step and I definitely feel he’s going in the right direction right now.”

Davis, a senior communications major, performed his best this year at The Evolution Championship Series in Las Vegas on July 15. Davis competed in popular fighting games such as Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Street Fighter V against over 5,000 players and finished in the top 500.

“I feel like it was a defining moment for me because I spent so much time on a game that only came out a few months ago at the time (and) that’s when I started talking to a lot of the international players to play sets with them,” Davis said after battling his way through multiple 16-player pools of double elimination with his favorite character Ken Masters. “It’s once in a blue moon that international players come over here to play and (even) though they may beat me, it’s still a lesson learned on how to improve because I want to become better than them eventually.”

Motivation comes in many forms for Davis. One form of motivation is his connection to his older brother Richard, who introduced him to Street Fighter 16 years ago, and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 in 2011. This bond was tested last year when Davis received an unexpected phone call at a tournament, telling him his brother needed surgery for a recently discovered brain tumor.

“It was successful, but it was the fact that he had to go through so much,” Davis said reflecting on his brother’s surgery. “He was my drive to become better too, because I wanted to do it for him and because he’s the one who really got me into fighting games, so I wanted to do it for my brother.”

Davis, who will travel to Los Angeles for his next Southern California tournament in October, and his brother shake their heads at naysayers who tell them that competitive video gaming isn’t an athletic event.

“Street Fighter V was on ESPN for Sunday night finals, so when a person tells me a video game is not a sport, I don’t really say much because that’s their opinion, (but) I disagree because let’s say for League of Legends and Starcraft, they have such a big prize pool up to $1 million and that’s a lot,” Davis said.

These numbers increase when analyzing the 112 e-sporting events that occurred in 2015, which garnered $20.6 million in ticket revenues and where winners were gifted up to $61 million, according to VentureBeat and market researcher Newzoo.

However, money and fame aren’t the reasons Davis keeps picking up his arcade fightstick to compete in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Street Fighter.

“It’s always fun because one thing I learned from my mentors is if you’re not having fun with a game, then why are you doing it?” Davis said.