(3)Phoenix Wright vs (6)Ike 2018

Ulti's Analysis
This one just floored me. I knew it was possible, and knew Ike was never all that strong, and that there was some stats proof Phoenix was stronger for this match, but I had to see it to actually believe it. The thought of Phoenix Wright, a visual novel character (no one cares about visual novels, get over it people) with a marginal Marvel vs Capcom 3 appearance and dubious contest history, beating Ike was just insane to me. Yet here we are.

I can't really overstate how huge this is, because look at how bad Phoenix's history is. This dude got blown out by Gordon Freeman. He almost blew a 1300 vote lead to Bomberman of all people in a second place duel. Bomberman! He was a 3 seed and lost to Jecht. His games always get completely and thoroughly blown out. The only times he has ever looked good are the Rivalry Rumble and Vincent getting a high school prom match picture in one of the biggest cases of sabotage we will ever see -- as a side note to KamikazePotato, that is picture sabotage, genius, not a well known sprite.

Ike's contest history isn't too much better, but was at least better than Phoenix's. He also has Smash backing, which is a better cameo than anything Phoenix has been in. In retrospect I should have seen this coming when the dude lost to Sarah Jessica Parker in 2013, but I digress.

When this match started, Phoenix didn't have his usual godslayer board vote, which was likely due to bracket voting. Phoenix was only able to slowly build a lead, so I figured Ike still had a shot.

Nope. Well I mean he did, but this match stayed too close for too long for him to potentially overcome a rally later. You don't beat Phoenix by having close matches with him. Board 8 won't allow it. You have to beat him. So then this poll was stuck in the range of Phoenix leading by 100-200 for the first 6 hours, it was effectively over. Ike could never truly make any headway, and then the night vote hit and just ended it. Phoenix took off overnight, Ike never got the morning vote, and that was that. This match was relatively close the entire time, but there was never one second where it looked like Ike was going to win it. This was the latest in a long history of underperformances, but this was the worst one. Let's run through the list.

In 2007, nominations were open when Ike was announced for Smash Bros. Brawl. His first fourpack had Duke Nukem, Guybrush Threepwood, and Gordon Freeman in it. Ike finished in third place, 1100 behind Gordon, as the only Nintendo character with two FPS characters stealing votes from each other. It's one of the most embarrassing losses I've ever seen.

In 2008, his fourpack had Pikachu, Arthas, and Spy in it. Third place again, this time 1100 behind Arthas. Again, a thoroughly embarrassing loss but at least he was sharing the poll with Nintendo. It was explainable.

In 2010 he finally got his chance to shine. In the first round he beat up a penguin, and in the second round he would have lost to Zidane but got lucky and drew Zidane in a day match. He would eventually get annihilated by Mario. Ike 100% loses to Zidane in a night match. Make no mistake there.

In 2013 his opening threepack had Proto Man and Dr. Robotnik in it. Ike only beat Proto Man by 170 votes and his lead was 500 at one point. If this poll was 2 hours longer, Ike would have lost. As-is, he only won with bracket votes. Then in round 2 he drew GLaDOS and Julia Roberts. He finished a distant third.

Which brings us to this year. Phoenix Wright is just an inexplicable loss. My whole job is finding out why people vote the way they do, but I got no answers here outside of Ike being a character that always gets into these weird debatable matches and always underperforms. I would bet most of his strength comes from Smash instead of Fire Emblem, too, and I can tell you the Smash fans are pretty fed up with all the Fire Emblem swordsman in those games. I would not be surprised if the male swordsmen were all anti-voted by those people. Ike, Chrom, Roy, and Marth are pretty much the exact character as far as Smash fans are concerned and none of them are particularly well liked outside the people who play them. That theory would explain a lot actually, because under normal circumstances with Smash backing a character shouldn't constantly choke.