(3)Tifa Lockheart vs (1)Sephiroth (Losers Bracket) 2018

Ulti's Analysis
Had Zelda never happened, this would have been our lowest prediction percentage of the entire contest. I know Tifa got annihilated by Samus twice, but that does not take away from Tifa's insane run this contest, how nuts this result is, and how epic these two sprites looked next to each other for us Final Fantasy fans. Tifa's wins, in order: Geno, Mewtwo, Mega Man X, Luigi, and Sephiroth. You won't find many contest runs better than Tifa's this year.

Remember this match? https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3849-jenova-division-final-sephiroth-vs-tifa-lockheart

It was only eight years ago. Sephiroth won 56-44, but I remember thinking at the time Tifa had a damn fine match and that Seph looked like absolute trash. Here's the proof: https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/(1)Sephiroth_vs_(10)Tifa_Lockheart_2010

It's also worth noting that back when Sephiroth was actually elite, these two had two fourpacks together in 2008. It did not go well for Tifa at all.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3274-division-8-round-1-nana-ratchet-sephiroth-tifa

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3291-division-8-round-2-sephiroth-tifa-kratos-jill

But here, in 2018, Tifa was done fucking around and decided to just beat Sephiroth's ass for eight solid hours. Seph's early vote struggles were going to catch up to him at some point, and it happened in this match. Tifa had a 200 vote lead in half an hour, and parlayed that into a 1000 vote lead through the poll's first eight hours.

Seph actually did really well for the final 16 hours of this poll, and by "well" I mean he "only" lost the last 16 hours of the poll by 200 total votes. But that didn't matter. The damage was done and Sephiroth's exit this year would go down as nothing short of embarrassing. He only looked good against Ryu, his early votes have been garbage for years, and this dude was bound to get exposed at some point. I just never imagined it would come at the hands of someone from his own game who has been weaker than him in these polls for 13 solid years (Tifa's debut was in 2005). Pikachu broke the Noble Nine. Zelda dug its grave. Tifa lowered the corpse in and buried it for good.

People know what Same Fanbase Factor (SFF) is by now, but this match is probably our first confirmed case of Reverse SFF. It's been talked about a lot, usually among Nintendo characters, but seeing Tifa beat Sephiroth like this is impossible to ignore. It's also the other direct match we would have gotten had the main bracket concluded, and with this we pretty much know what would have happened.

Pikachu > Ganondorf Bowser > Alucard Zelda > Auron Tifa > Sephiroth

Bowser > Pikachu Zelda > Tifa

Zelda > Bowser

That would have been so, so entertaining. Thanks, Allen :(

I still think Seph might be stronger than Tifa indirectly by maybe a percentage or two, but he will never be what he once was. It would also be very, very, very difficult for me to pick him over anyone in that low Noble Nine to near-elite range. Basically, that whole group of Luigi, Mega Man X, Mega Man, Sonic, Bowser, Ganondorf, Pikachu, Kirby, Crono, Yoshi, and so on could all make a case for beating Sephiroth. It's pretty sad given he almost won the contest in 2003, and outright won a contest once. That dude has fallen really far from where he once was.

You know what could save him though? And I'm not even kidding about this.

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/965/030/d82.png

Unfortunately, Square is run by a bunch of complete idiots. There is nothing and no one in media that hasn't benefited from compilations. Coachella draws more interest than any one tour from any artist playing at Coachella. Avengers speaks for itself. Smash Bros taking our site over speaks for itself. Lebron ushering in players controlling leagues instead of other way around speaks for itself. "Nah bro I'll do my own thing" just doesn't work anymore. But I'm spoiling something I want to talk about later so we move on.