(16)The Boss vs (15)Sub-Zero vs (7)Bowser 2013

Ulti's Analysis
A lot of people noted in this match that The Boss feels like she gets into one weird match every contest (except the female bracket), and they would be right. Check this out.

2007 - Only beats Tails by 350 or so for third place after giving up a 900 vote lead, but no one cared because it was for third place. 2010 - Gets in via vote-in, then upsets Nathan Drake as a 15 seed before getting 46% on Weighted Companion Cube. 2011 - All of Big Boss vs. The Boss's matches finish within 60-40.

The reason The Boss isn't heralded in the same way as Kefka is because her matches never really matter, including this year. Who cares about The Boss v Sub-Zero when Bowser just advances anyway, right? But now we have the Expert Challenge, so stuff like this really matters.

The very short of it here is that for something like 9 hours of this poll, The Boss and Sub-Zero were basically tied, in a throwback to the Chrono Trigger/LTTP days. This was really surprising, because Metal Gear Solid has a hilariously awful day vote. So come the evening, everyone expected The Boss to pull away.

Naturally, Sub-Zero won the evening vote and SNV instead, and pulled away to win by 246. This contest made absolutely no goddamn sense whatsoever, and this was another match among many that helped prove it. Every trend we have said The Boss would take second place here, and she didn't.

I happen to love stuff like this, because anything that beats trends and LOL X-STATS and all the rest of the pretentious contest noise is okay in my book. You can follow all that stuff and get into the 99th percentile every contest, but you'll never win unless the field is so predictable like Rivalry Rumble was.

To actually win a contest, you need to be like Lopen or raytan. Pick weird stuff and not give two f***s. raytan won a guru contest by picking a Samus > Mario final, for crissakes.