Results[]
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | East Division |
|---|---|
| Match # | 15 |
| Match Date | Tuesday, July 15th, 2003 |
| Vote difference | 28,969 |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Zero - 47.28% (19,414 brackets) |
Zero made quite the splash in his first contest match, though you need to look all the way back at 2002 to see why Zero's performance was such a surprise.
You all know the story by now. Scorpion gets put into a wonderful spot in 2002 and proceeds to shock everyone by beating Max Payne and Pac Man in succession (both of which were heavily favored) before finally getting his ass handed to him by Link.
Enter 2003, where Scorpion is stuck as a 10 seed after his wonderful performance against a character that few people around here had ever heard of, Zero of Mega Man X fame. People didn't want to get snake bit twice in a row by Scorpion, and they all overcompensated his 2002 performance by favoring Scorpion to win this match. Zero not being all that well-known to people who hadn't played the MMX series added to all of this, and you can see by the prediction percentage that Scorpion was the favorite both to us and the casuals. His 2002 run really was that important to everyone.
But along came the beginning of the match, and Zero managed to prove that it wasn't Scorpion's strength, but his soft-as-crap half division that led to his run in 2002. This match started off badly for Scorpion and only grew worse, and the only good thing that can really be said about him is that a massive amount of people rallied to vote in this match one way or the other. Nearly 113,000 total votes in a first round match is no joke, but this tends to happen when a heavy favorite starts going down.
Scorpion isn't exactly a weak character; he was simply a bit overestimated going into this match, and his opponent being somewhat of an unknown helped overrate Scorpion even more. The only reason this match was even relatively split (outside of the people who have actually played Mega Man X games) is because of Mega Man's massive success in Summer 2002. He left an impression on people, and the words "Mega Man" on Zero's little bio were an eye-opener to many.
Zero would go on to have a rather impressive contest career (though we still need to see him in a close match), while this match would quietly end Scorpion's time in the sun in these contests. He hasn't won a match since, and recently he lacked the support to even get into a contest field in the first place. In an odd way, it's almost a shame that CJayC's bracketmaking skills have improved. It would be nice to see more middle strength characters like Scorpion make the Elite 8, but we simply don't see things like this anymore.
Despite the bad loss from the favorite's seat, a seat that Scorpion hasn't sat in since he defeated Kazuya in 2002, that magical 2002 run cannot be taken away from him. All we need now is for Sub-Zero to get into one of these contests, or better yet, a match between Scorpion and Ken Masters.