Ulti's Analysis[]
This match seems oddly familiar, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Hmm.
Oh yeah! https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2009-ruin-division-round-2-kefka-vs-wesker
It was almost the same exact percentages and the same exact trends, too. It was freaking eerie, and it kind of showed how off Sephiroth would be for this entire contest. Division 8 in general was the oddball division, and I feel like Allen did this intentionally to make sure Sephiroth would end up in the Noble Nine's group post-contest instead of just totally snubbing him. With the way this bracket was set up, either legends were waiting for every division winner in a double elimination bracket. This meant one had to be left out, which ended up being Sephiroth.
Message From Ultima_X on 10/05/2018
For archiving/post contest purposes only (you're free to just ban me if I share this one publicly before the contest ends, seriously, got no plans on spilling this before its due date): why was Sephiroth not counted as a legend despite winning a contest in the past? Did he just get the least amount of nominations? Did the other 8 get ordered by nomination number or was it kind of planned out intentionally?
If this gets answered, am I free to share the info when the contest ends and I do my writeups or no?
Message From GameFAQs on 10/05/2018
We only needed eight for the double elimination bracket and Sephiroth was the most obvious cut since Final Fantasy VII already has a more popular rep in Cloud. You can share this with anyone since it's not a big secret and I'm sure plenty of people figured it out on their own.
So there you go. But Allen was smart about this and made Sephiroth's division hilariously weak to make sure he won it. Only two threats were possible, a rallied Draven or Seph being so weak now that Ryu would beat him with a Smash boost. Seph would end up really weak this contest compared to what he was, but he's not that weak. Not yet, anyway.
I would love to see a Seph vs Kefka match just to see where Wesker actually stands. Wesker got such a raw deal in this contest. I'm sure Seph is stronger than Kefka, but both of them having identical matches with the guy is just weird.
Safer777's Analysis[]
Finally a N9'er! We haven't seen one of them in a long time! Anyways people were expecting for Seph to do around 70% and see how he did. RE has boosted I believe. All RE characters did decent I say and 2 managed to advance too. Seph maybe the weakest N9'er yeah but come on he can take out almost all the cast in the main bracket even now. So okay performance I say. Man remember the term Clinkeroth?
Tsunami's Analysis[]
This should've been an early warning that Sephiroth was off his game this year. Yes, he broke 70%, but the popular line was that Resident Evil had vastly declined.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2009-ruin-division-round-2-kefka-vs-wesker https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7294-division-8-round-1-sephiroth-vs-wesker
Keep in mind that not only should Wesker be weaker now than he was when he faced Kefka, but Kefka should've been weaker when he faced Wesker than he is now. Yes, that was the first time Kefka had gotten his final boss sprite in a match pic, so it was probably a stronger Kefka than what we'd seen up to that point in contest history, but Kefka is definitely a character who seems to have boosted over time rather than declined. So unless a lot of our assumptions are incorrect, a stronger Wesker did worse against a weaker Kefka than this Wesker did against Sephiroth. Is anyone taking the Kefka > Sephiroth upset? ...Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if some people took that upset simply because Kefka has a reputation for strange results and beating his FF7 counterpart is about as strange as it gets. I don't think I would, even though I picked FF6 to upset FF7 in 2015.