Longtime readers of this column will know that I’ve written about Zain and Cody Schwab’s rivalry numerous times. Earlier this year, I wrote a column comparing those two to other dynamic duos in Melee history – it’s no surprise that a couple months later, this still seems to be the case. Despite a return to form of sorts for Mango, who double eliminated Cody from Pat’s House 4, the fact of the matter remains: Zain still won the tournament. In the process, the event marked a ninth straight major in which Zain or Cody attended and one of them won. By my estimation, it’s the longest win streak for a “dynamic” duo in SSBMRank history in terms of total events. The last time someone else won a major where Zain or Cody were present (and seriously competing) was LACS 5, when Leffen won.
Playing Roy made me understand how to play marth again
I won’t elaborate further
Pats house champ 🙂
— Zain (@ZainNaghmi) April 29, 2024
Focusing on just this year for a moment, it feels like a guarantee that one of them will end the year with the top spot. By hardware, they’re the only major winners of 2024. By head-to-heads, they still remain ahead of everyone else (at least if you apparently keep Cody away from Hungrybox and Zain away from aMSa). But as I’ve said many times before, just because a series of events has happened doesn’t mean that it will always happen. It is clearly not impossible for anyone to defeat Cody and Zain; the question is if the scene has anyone that could conceivably supplant them or outright dethrone them.
In today’s column, I want to see if there’s any chance of one of these two not getting number one. I’ll be comparing how they fare in terms of “hardware” (placements at notable tournaments) compared to their closest peers, then jumping into their head-to-heads, and then trying to wrap my head around what needs to happen for Cody and Zain to not finish at number one.
By Notable Placements
Anyone who’s watching Melee today basically already knows that there’s a huge gap between the Zain/Cody duo and everyone else. But I figured I’d put some numbers as to their dominance vs. the rest of the 2024 field. While it very clearly doesn’t tell the whole story about their success – and it should obviously be used as the sole basis for determining rankings – I collected data on all the players who made major top eights this year. Keep in mind that this chart doesn’t count placements at other events – I was mostly curious about raw “major” top eights made; not average placements.
NOTE: For the purpose of just having more data, I decided to count Full Bloom 2024 as a major. In wake of Mango’s excellent Pat’s House 4 showing, I also think it’s likely that by the end of the year, Liquipedia’s volunteer team changes its mind on this event’s qualification status (as it did for Riptide 2023). If not, I will have egg on my face, but fair enough.
| Player | 1sts | 2nds | 3rds | 4ths | 5ths | 7ths | Notable Top 8s |
| Zain | 3 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| Cody | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Mango | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 4 |
| Jmook | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Hungrybox | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| moky | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| aMSa | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Joshman | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Salt | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| Ossify | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Spark | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Sirmeris | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Leffen | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Soonsay | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Aklo | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Wizzrobe | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Magi | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Lucky | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Medz | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Grab | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
Now, it’s worth noting that Zain and Cody have been present at nearly every big event, with Cody’s DQ from Full Blooms standing out as the only outlier. In contrast, each of Jmook and moky have missed a top eight earlier this year. Curiously, Mango and Hungrybox have been the only players that have been consistently making top eights this year at a rate and volume comparable to Zain and Cody. aMSa isn’t too far behind, having looked exceptional against anyone who isn’t Cody. By placements, if you made an annual “Top 10” right now, after Zain and Cody, you’d have some order of aMSa, Hungrybox, Mango, moky, and Jmook. Honestly, you’d probably have Leffen in there too, as his one top eight is pretty good; you can’t hold losing to the two best players in the world for ninth place too much against him.
By H2Hs
Although we don’t have that many events, we do have a decent amount of sets between the top echelon of play. This is in large part due to both the high number of majors we’ve had this early into the year, but also because of tournaments like the SoCal Star League series and Mango in Progress. Below, I’ve compiled the group I have above of “surefire and sufficiently active so far Top 10 players” with their average win-rates against each other.
Like with the previous chart, I would not take this one as a stand-in replacement for how players should be ranked. Also, not all the top echelon players have had equal opportunities against each other. For example, Zain has had 21 sets against this group of players, while Leffen has only had five, with four of them coming vs. Cody and Zain. At the same time, we still notice a clear difference between Zain/Cody and the rest of the field. They are basically performing twice as well against this group. As fans, we know that they’re technically in a different tier of players by results, so none of this is necessarily new; it’s just putting numbers to how much better it’s been for them.
With that said, the real story hidden within these numbers is how the people that beat Cody and the people that beat Zain are often not the same player. The last time aMSa beat Cody, we still had multiple Melee circuits; it’s looked hopeless for him since, and yet aMSa’s turned the corner on Zain. In similar fashion, it appears that Hungrybox and Mango can still challenge Cody to a replicable degree (probably more so for Mango in terms of Mango just having a proven record of success in their careers), but neither of them have been able to come close to touching Zain. moky’s somewhat similar in that regard too. Unsurprisingly, for Leffen to have won a major right before this period, he needed to beat both of them, and the same could be said for Jmook’s major victories to start 2023. In fact, the last time someone won a major without needing to beat Cody and Zain, with the two in attendance, was aMSa’s victory at Apex 2022.
What Does The Rest of the Year Look Like?
I’m going to risk of sounding a like a total moron here, but there is one extremely funny “grass is green” precondition for someone outside of Zain or Cody to finish number one: Zain or Cody can’t keep winning. The magic number here is “four.” When Cody finished number one in 2023 by the margins, he won four majors, two “almost majors,” and he won The Match. When Zain finished number one in 2022, he similarly won four majors. Funnily enough, that particular number one year for Zain was arguably thinner than Cody’s in some ways: for instance, in December, had Mango won Scuffed World Tour, it was quite possible that Mango would finish at the top spot; he would have had five major wins for that year.
Beyond this decade’s SSBMRank results, you’ll notice a similar pattern in previous years. Hungrybox had basically locked up No. 1 by Low Tier City 7, his fourth major of the year; yes, Leffen had that amazing Super Smash Con win and entered Shine 2019 as the top seed, but in hindsight, expecting this to shake up the actual No. 1 race was a bit unreasonable as Leffen was barely active and still far behind Hungrybox by hardware. In 2018, Armada’s retirement effectively cemented Hungrybox as the number one of that year, but it was already starting to look rough by Hungrybox’s fourth major win of that year by CEO 2018, with each of Armada, Mew2King, and Plup only win one major each by that same time. It’s safe to say that if Zain wins one more big event, he won’t necessarily lock the top spot for himself, but he will essentially make it a two-person race. You could say the same for Cody if you weighted his Genesis win significantly higher than your standard major, but at the very least, he won’t have hit the magic number.
I’ve written about this year’s major schedule before, so I won’t be jumping into the specifics on what’s occurring when and who is attending. For now, and just based on my knowledge of what’s coming up, I think it’s safe to assume that we have at least eight majors left in the year. I would expect that number to go slightly up, but for now, let’s stick with eight. We had 12 majors last year, we have four official majors this year (and Full Bloom, which I anticipate being upgraded), and our tourney ecosystem is better than it was in 2023, so this is my conservative guess. With that in mind, has there ever been a total disruptive switch-up in the top tier of play, and has there ever been years where the person who won the most majors didn’t finish at number one?
For the first question, you don’t have to look too far for an answer. Zain and Cody were arguably the best players in the world for the first half of 2022, but in the fall to winter period, they weren’t anywhere near as dominant. Instead, Mango and aMSa were, as the two of them effectively became the one and two of that specific timespan. To the second question, we have some interesting precedent here: 2016, when Hungrybox won seven majors, but finished second to Armada (who had six), and 2015, when Leffen won six majors, and yet finished No. 3 of that year, right behind Hungrybox (who won two majors), and Armada (who won five).
As a brief detour: Armada’s presence within this timespan is pretty interesting. He was basically so consistent and dominant that majors could happen underneath him, but the community noticed such a large gap between Armada and everyone else that it implicitly devalued events where he wasn’t present. It especially became noticeable when you consider the fact that he wasn’t always present due to him being in Sweden. I mention this because I think there is one potential parallel with today in aMSa; if aMSa went to his next major (let’s say GOML) and won without dropping a set, and then won another event before not entering anything for the rest of the year, wouldn’t he potentially have a great argument for best player in the world? Could the lack of aMSa at a tournament ever implicitly devalue it?
All of this is to say that I think it’s pretty unlikely that anyone catches up to Zain and Cody for an annual resume. It could be possible that aMSa succeeds enough to throw a wrench in the race, and a mini-run from another peer – one similar to the mini-run that Jmook had to start 2023 – could further complicate the top echelon of play. But for now, we should probably formalize how we see Zain and Cody; they really are just that much better than everyone else.