Clinkeroth

Clinkeroth is the term used as a shorthand to when talking about the three most powerful characters in Contest history:


 * Cloud
 * Link
 * Sephiroth

In poetic terms, you could say that Clinkeroth forms the Triforce of Power at the top of the Noble Nine. The term was developed after the Summer 2003 Contest when it became apparent that these three Final Fantasy 7/Zelda stars were in a league of their own in terms of Contest strength, and were not likely to be defeated by outside competition anytime soon.

After Cloud and Link proved this theory by dominating their way to the Finals of the 2004 Contest, Clinkeroth was removed from the Character Battles of 2005 (through the creation of a separate Tournament of Champions) and 2006 (through the creation of a separate Battle Royale). Due to the odd 4-way format, all three were allowed to return to the main bracket in 2007.

The Clinkeroth beast has only been defeated by outside competition once (twice if you count non-1v1 results... thrice if you count non-sitewide polls):


 * Mario stunned the world by defeating Cloud with 50.11% of the vote in their 2002 Elite Eight matchup. Many still consider this the strangest result in Contest history based on everything these two characters have shown us outside of this one match, while others call it the luckiest draw ever in that Mario surely couldn't have prevailed had Super Mario Sunshine not been released on the exact day of the poll.


 * L-Block completed the most shocking run in GameFAQs history by upsetting both Link and Cloud in the 4-way 2007 Final. The Block had so much momentum going for him by the end of his amazing streak that not even the combined forces of Clink + Solid Snake could stop him.


 * Jay Solano did just the opposite of what was originally intended by upsetting Link with 51.85% of the vote in an "Ultimate Battle!" held as a bonus after the 2006 Contest. TRE had invented the Solano phenomenon as an attempt to top Tanner as the weakest character ever, but because the Ultimate voting was limited to only Board 8, a major Clinkeroth backlash resulted in Jay instead becoming the most powerful character in history, based on strict stats.  Whoops!

Overall, Clinkeroth is 43-1 against outside competition in 1v1 site-wide Contest matches.