(1)Dante vs (4)Ganondorf 2018

Ulti's Analysis
Man does it feel good to be in the late rounds of this thing. Round 2 is always the hardest one to write, because most of the matches suck. But what can you do. A true sternographer covers everything!

After how bad Ganon looked against Chun-Li, there was some question about whether or not Dante could win here that was shut down immediately. This was legitimately a boring old 56-44 match for 24 straight hours with no movement whatsoever, so it's time to look into when and how all of our overall #1 seeds have lost. That's the seed Dante got, so it's the standard we have to evaluate him on.

Summer 2002 - Mario loses to Link in the final.

Summer 2003 - Link loses to Cloud in the semifinal in famous fashion.

Spring 2004 - Mario 3 loses in the semifinal to Chrono Trigger. This contest was seeded by era.

Summer 2004 - Link wins the contest.

Spring 2005 - Bowser loses in the semifinal to Sephiroth.

Summer 2005 - Mario wins the main bracket.

Series Contest - The Legend of Zelda wins.

Fall 2006 - Samus wins the main bracket.

[4ways didn't have real seeding, fuck outta here.]

Winter 2010 - Link wins the contest.

Game of the Decade - Fallout 3 loses in the semifinal to Brawl. This contest was seeded by era.

Rivalries - Mario and Bowser lose in the final to Link and Ganon.

Fall 2013 - Link loses in round 3 to the Draven rally and LOL 3ways.

Games 2015 - Chrono Trigger loses in the divisional final to a Melee rally.

Which brings us to this year, and Dante losing in round 3 without putting up a fight. Anything seem a little out of place on this list? Yeah, Dante himself. If you're the top seed, the standard is you make a deep run or you lose to a rally. You can't sit there and not compete before even making the finals of your own division. Normally this loss would be whatever, but this is a bad loss for a #1 overall seed. Dante clearly did not belong in that spot and was clearly overseeded based on the DMC5 hype video.

It's easy to pull a Gruden, claim 50-50 hindsight, and say it should have been obvious Zelda was our #1 overall seed. I won't go that far, because that's unfair. All I'll say on that is giving my own list of who deserved that spot with pre-contest information. No hindsight. Not who deserved it more than Dante, which would have been a much longer list, just who deserved the #1 overall seed period with our top 8 characters removed for a legends bracket.

Bowser Ganondorf Kirby Luigi Mega Man X Pikachu Sephiroth Squall Tifa Zelda

That's 10 characters, with Sephiroth being the most obvious one since he was the odd one out of the noble nine this year. I waffled a bit on Auron vs Squall, but Squall won that match heads-up once.

To the point. Stick any of those characters at the top and they aren't losing in round 3 so easily like this unless they face each other. This was a major botch by Allen, who usually does a decent job on seeds. You can't just look at nominations, bro.