(7)Fox McCloud vs (12)Pokemon Trainer Blue vs (21)Wolf O'Donnell 2013

Ulti's Analysis
This was one of the most hyped round 1 matches of the entire contest, because the belief here is that whoever won between Fox and Blue would cause a chain reaction that decided the winner of the contest.

If Blue won, it was believed that he would advance to the divisional final, where he would screw Pikachu and cause Sora to win, who would then screw Cloud and cause Snake to win, and then Snake would be in the final and ride Link/Mario LFF to finally winning a contest. If Fox won, it was believed Pikachu would win the division (without Blue there to jam things up), and then Snake would be screwed against Cloud because Sora wouldn't be there to drag Cloud down.

Given Board 8 has wanted to see Snake win a contest for ages now, we wanted Blue to win this match, and badly.

The funny part about all this is Fox drew the absolute worst possible third wheel he could have possibly drawn for a match like. Even Falco would have been better, because then we all know Blue wins and there's no debate. But as-is? Oh man.

It would ultimately not matter much, which seems to happen when chain reaction slippery slope logic gets used in contests. First and foremost, Blue went well above pre-contest expectations and just blew Fox completely out of the water in this match. A lot of people believed Blue was weak enough to lose this even with Wolf sharing the poll, but Blue put that to rest really quickly even as Wolf rolled over and died in exactly the way he was supposed to do. It made the whole debate funny, because Blue's strength was in question before this contest began, and then gets Fox and Wolf in round 1 to help get a bandwagon going. I'm going to say this a lot during this PCA, but nothing and no one got better draws or more luck than Pokemon in this contest.

The other reason this wouldn't matter much is because Pikachu ended up winning the Pikachu/Sora/Blue tilt, and Cloud would never even make it to the Snake match. But this match's hype was still really awesome to be a part of in context.