We’re at a relative lull in the major schedule. Until the last week of April we aren’t going to have many majors. As a result, I find myself in a curious position. What do I talk about for this week’s Monday Morning Marth? Initially, my plan was to review a bunch of player resumes for this year, jot down some interesting trends I’ve noticed at the major and regional levels of results, and recap the year, broadly speaking. But I decided that was boring. Instead, I want to zoom out a little bit.
For today’s column, I’m going to be talking about a few players today who have more or less joined the pantheon of all-time great players. I may end up doing this in multiple parts. But for now, I want to talk about Zain, Cody Schwab, and, most curiously, Leffen. I’ll be discussing what’s currently on the line (if anything) for either of their legacies, where they stand by the numbers, how they can improve their legacies moving forward, and what I most fondly remember about each one.
Zain
If you had to think of a definitive player for the 2020s, it’s hard to come up with a better answer than Zain, even as Cody’s mostly been the best player in the world for the last nine months. The fact of the matter is that Zain has still spent more time than Cody at the top level, having won his first major in Shine 2018 almost six years ago. Since then, he’s made the jump from Top 10 fringe contender to supermajor champion, unofficial best in the world (at least for 2020), and official best in the world (2022), before reaching where he is now (No. 2 in 2023 and likely right now).
🙂
Lets get it
Officially joined @MoistEsports @MogulMoves https://t.co/Kk8ByLPJqO
— Zain (@ZainNaghmi) April 6, 2023
Obviously, one element to Zain’s legacy that will drastically shift where you have him is how you evaluate the online/pandemic era of Melee. From the middle to 2020 to early 2022 (around LACS 4), Zain was by far the best player in the world. Personally, I don’t think it’s fair to discount his achievements in this era; to me, it’s more like an asterisk that follows it. Do individual weeks of Summit Champions League really qualify as “majors” in the same way as a three-day open event? I feel like the answer is obviously “no,” but simultaneously, during the time in which it happened, rollback Melee was the primary way we played the game. It wasn’t like Zain fell off a cliff either. He ended up finishing atop the rankings in 2022 and added four other majors to his title count, only to add four more in 2023 and finish one best-of-ten exhibition away from No. 1 that year. Clearly, the success he found during the online period was not entirely due to inherent differences between online and offline play.
Where do the numbers have Zain? Going by the strict Liquipedia definition of major (treating weeks of SCL as equivalent to majors), he has 21, just one under Armada (22) and well beneath each of Mango (35) and Hungrybox (37). Before anyone gets mad at me – yes; clearly, these numbers are subjective and heavily depend on what you count as a major or not. If you were to completely discount the online period here, he would still finish at 12 majors of all-time, still beneath Hungrybox and Mango (who would now have 31), but this time beneath each of Armada (22), Ken (16), and Leffen (13). Counting purely supermajors, and using the Liquipedia definition for them (what the team dubs “premiers”), Zain’s supermajor count stands at 6, one under Hungrybox, and well beneath each of Mango (12) and Armada (11).
It’s very clear that where you have Zain depends upon how much you measure his online achievements. Either he has the fourth most titles ever, or they are about as valuable as anyone else’s hardware just outside of the vaunted trio of Mango/Hungrybox/Armada; maybe Ken if you’re really pessimistic about Zain’s achievements and bullish on Ken. Moving forward, I think that for Zain to enter the untouchable ‘trio’ group of players, he needs all or some of significantly more majors, supermajor victories, and time spent as number one.
NOTE: Curiously, Liquipedia does not count Summits as supermajors, surprisingly even Smash Summit 11. I may review this later; for now, it’s just beyond the scope of this column to dive into the details. Don’t think about it too much.
Cody Schwab
Now we get into the scene’s current best player, and apparently its newly heralded villain. Like I’ve done with Zain, I’ve written about Cody’s legacy before, particularly when it comes to his place in the discussion for greatest Fox of all-time. Basically everything I’ve said has held up quite well when it comes to this specific conversation: he went on to win a bunch of majors, win the most high stakes exhibition match in Melee history, and effectively carve his own path for greatest Fox player ever.
It’s worth noting that Cody, like Zain, was a fast riser, although it took Cody a bit more time to break through to the top echelon. When Cody got to Top 10, he was effectively hamstrung by consistency issues and then during the pandemic, when he was all but confirmed as the unofficial No. 3, he could not defeat any of the two players above him. That obviously changed at Smash Summit 12, and we’ve all seen what Cody’s gone on to achieve. Another year in the top five, more major victories, a year at number one, and, so far, two more majors for him this year. He even became the first player to boast both Genesis and Big House titles since Hungrybox, something which Zain still hadn’t done.
The numbers don’t lie when it comes to Cody. As it stands for major count, he sits at 10, just three behind Leffen, six behind Ken and behind everyone else that I’ve mentioned before. To put this into perspective, compare Cody to Mew2King. Mew2King is one of the greatest players of all-time, and when he was active, Mew2King’s decade-plus time as a Top 5 to 10 player was often cited as the paragon of timeless greatness. In under three years (late 2021 to now), Cody has won more majors than Mew2King.
The types of events Cody has won furthermore stand out as impressive. He isn’t only winning Mickey Mouse tournaments over lesser players; he’s winning them either in outright dominant showcases of unstoppable Fox play or he’s completely trouncing everyone in the losers bracket and casually making history in the process. If he retired today, he would have two of the greatest losers bracket runs of all-time: his stunning Big House 11 victory and his recent win at Battle of BC 6. As it stands right now, the former is just one of three supermajor wins for Cody, the seventh most of all-time, just behind Leffen (four), Ken (four), and everyone else I previously mentioned. At the very least, I think Cody has become my pick for greatest Fox main of all-time; unlike each of Mango and Leffen, who needed other characters to succeed for multiple of their major wins, Cody can claim to be the player who always stuck to Fox.
Leffen
I’ll be honest: I don’t like that Leffen is leaving Melee. This is not out of a distaste for Leffen. He unambiguously makes this community more fun and is a treat to watch. Though it’s clearly not the only factor that goes into his hiatus, I can’t help but feel completely ashamed of the fact his absence is in part impacted by an unhealthy personal grudge that a rival held over him for several years. But I suppose that’s a topic for another time.
For now, Leffen’s last ten years essentially mark his time at the top echelon of play. From being the guy who finally made Armada bleed in Europe to becoming the “godslayer” to a perennial contender for best in the world, Leffen essentially became one of Melee’s most iconic figures. This has stayed the case even as he’s lately gone on to, you know, win an Evo in a totally different game and become a fighting games legend outside of Smash.
At the same time, it’s hard to view Leffen’s accomplishments without still feeling bittersweet about it. By the numbers, he stands at 13 all-time majors – three beneath Ken, eight beneath Zain by raw count, nine beneath Armada, and well beneath each of Mango and Hungrybox. And yet, this doesn’t really capture his legacy, or at least not in my mind. Sadly, it’s the empty spaces of his career that I think about; the times when factors outside of Leffen’s control got in the way for his ability to participate in the scene and become the best player in the world.
The first example of what comes to mind here: the visa ban, where from late 2015 to late 2016, Leffen couldn’t compete in America. He essentially missed out on The Big House 5, Genesis 3, Battle of the Five Gods, and Evo 2016: four of the biggest events of this time period. In all fairness, he did get the epic GOML 2016 win in Canada, but at the same time, it’s hard to say that he wouldn’t have been in contention for winning all of those aforementioned tournaments, if not other ones he didn’t even get a chance to compete in. Had he won Big House in 2015, he would have had two supermajor wins of the year (Big House and CEO), while each of Armada (Evo and, in this case, no Big House)) and PPMD (Apex) would have only had one.
The second one that comes to mind: the pandemic. You cannot look at the period of Zain and Mango trouncing everyone for a year and a half in the online age without wondering how tournaments would have turned out had Leffen been able to play vs. North American talent instead of being relegated to Europe (a lovely scene, but also not one with top echelon talent outside of Leffen). This is not to detract from Zain and Mango’s achievements for what they actually accomplished; at the same time, we as a scene would have been better off for having more talent available in the scene.
Not all the factors that went against Leffen were entirely out of his control. In the back end of his career, his commitments to competing in other games – Smash Ultimate and Dragonball FighterZ come to mind, though Guilty Gear: Strive now is the biggest example – often got in the way of his ability to dedicate himself to Melee. At the risk of sounding glib, there were two letters that I often wondered about before majors featuring Leffen, “DQ.” Of all the top Melee talent in the world, he was by far the most egregious of DQ-worthy player. At one point, I started making predictions about Leffen DQ’ing before it even happened, and worse yet, having it turn out correct.
And yet the fact of the matter is that he accomplished so much despite not always being able to give his all to Melee. Each of his major wins this decade – Battle of BC 4 and LACS 5 – offered some of the most exciting developments in the game’s history. The empty spaces between Leffen’s strong performances are inexplicably tied to his legacy, but so too are the peak moments where he would go on to look like he was the best player in the world. I still have fond memories over his Evo 2018 win, in which he really just looked like he was on a completely different plane of existence vs. Armada. While he never “officially” achieved that title of No. 1 for himself, I think what we ended up with was an important part of Melee history that I’ll always cherish. It’s something I believe we’ll forever be grateful to having witnessed.