(3)Ryu vs (6)Commander Shepard 2018

Ulti's Analysis
For the wiki readers, I wrote on my love of Shepard and Mass Effect here. No need to relive it: https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/(6)Commander_Shepard_vs_(11)King_K._Rool_2018

Shepard needing to fight off a fat alligator thing meant round 2 was always going to be a predictable blowout, and the sad thing is this might have been a competitive match before crybabies started bitching about a perfectly acceptable ending. And that was back during the last game Shepard was actually in. Shep is clearly going to pay for Andromeda from now on, and we saw it in this contest. We were one morning vote away from this match being Ryu vs King K Rool, of all things.

I will say this. Before Smash Ultimate I would have been really annoyed over one of my most hated characters destroying one of my favorites. But Street Fighter 5 was laughably bad and got me to stop playing the series, while Ryu in the Smash games has slowly won me over. So while I don't love the guy, I can at least watch him win matches like this without going nuts.

The other story here was whether or not Ryu looked good enough to beat Sephiroth later, since that's clearly where this division was going.

Commander Shepard (2010c) VS Sephiroth (2010c)

Commander Shepard has a strength of 29.62. Sephiroth has a strength of 44.65.

Sephiroth wins with 66.83% of the vote!

So far, so good! Especially if you were banking on Smash and Nintendo giving Ryu the boost he needed while also banking on Seph losing more strength.