(4)Cloud Strife vs (5)Crono (Legends Bracket) 2018

Ulti's Analysis
A common theme that kept popping up pre-contest was trying to figure out which match Cloud would lose. He's been looking vulnerable for years in these things and Final Fantasy 7 has looked like trash for a decade. I myself have gotten caught up in this, mainly because I picked the Squirtle loss and loved that random Trainers > FF7 upset we got as a bonus match in the Rivalry Rumble. For the curious, I had Cloud losing to Monika (lol) one round later and then losing to Link in the losers bracket. Shows what I know!

What we all forgot is that Cloud appearing in Super Smash Bros is a huge deal, and staved off a lot of his erosion. Beginning with this match (some would say the Bowser match but I disagree), there was a lot of hype about Cloud losing. Crono's case was pretty obvious, too, given how insane Chrono Trigger looked in 2015. This was the first time these two had ever faced each other 1 on 1, too, which was really neat.

Unfortunately for everyone, this match was a typical Final Fantasy 7 match. Close to 5 minutes, then FF7 wins like it always does lol. There are actually people who think FF7 wins every contest, which is so weird. The hope for Crono died in about 10 minutes, and given Cloud would end up getting 57% here, this was actually a fantastic match for the guy. Most people did not see him doing this well: http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k18&type=match&match=134

This wasn't SFF, either, because we've seen that Final Fantasy slash Square doesn't really SFF itself outside of very obvious cases. This was just Cloud taking his newfound Smash Bros strength and putting an old-school ass whuppin on a pretender. I also want everyone to remember that this was a sprite round match. These two would have a rematch in a few days without sprites that would prove me right once and for all that sprites don't make one damn bit of difference and that all the crybabies who spent 2 weeks bitching about them would leave this contest looking unbelievably dumb.