Dropping only five games throughout the entire tournament, Cody Schwab is the official champion of Genesis X, winning it on Sunday over aMSa, as well as nabbing additional victories over Leffen, Wizzrobe, Joshman, and Krudo at the same event. The supermajor marks Cody’s third consecutive major win, and for that matter, his fifth straight major and national victory, including Arcamelee 4 and Santa Paws.
Fun fact about @iBDWSSBM's Genesis X win: He now is the 4th player to ever win both a Genesis and a Big House. Joining Mango, Armada, and Hungrybox.
— Liquipedia Smash (@LiquipediaSmash) February 19, 2024
NOTE: Yes, I just determined that Arcamelee and Santa Paws are nationals, which is a different distinguishing name for an event I’m deciding right now, based on major contenders in attendance. No, I will not be expanding on this any further.
In the modern era (2013 onward), only Hungrybox and Armada have won as many majors and nationals in a row. Hungrybox accomplished this with six straight major or national wins from Shine 2017 to Smash Summit 5 (counting Too Hot To Handle, but not Apollo X), while Armada’s legendary late 2016-2017 stretch involved eight consecutive wins at Eclipse 2, Canada Cup 2016, Smash Summit 3, DreamHack Winter 2016, UGC Smash Open, Genesis 4, BEAST 7, and Smash Summit Spring 2017.
If Cody can win Full Bloom 2024 next weekend, he’ll be at six consecutive wins, tying Hungrybox and being two away from Armada. As of right now, the last time anyone eliminated Cody Schwab (or more specifically, his Fox) was Super Smash Con 2023, when Hungrybox beat him in the loser’s finals. Since then, he’s dropped three sets in total, one to Zain in Shine 2023 grand finals, one to Morsecode762 at The Big House 11, and one to Jmook at Santa Paws.
But as tempting as it is to dedicate the entirety of this column to Cody’s legacy – let alone the rest of Genesis – the truth is that we barely have any time at all to break it down. In fact, with Full Bloom 2024 coming up, we very well have yet another major we’ll need to talk about. Now, because Full Bloom’s bracket isn’t available yet, we don’t know the exact seeding of the event. As a result, I can’t run a simulation of the bracket like I could from last week. However, I can still preview the event in broad terms.
In today’s column, I’m going to be breaking down 16 players to look out for at Full Bloom 2024. Although they won’t necessarily be ordered by skill – or even the 16 best players – they’re the ones I found most interesting and want to discuss at the end of the column. After this, I’ll be making my pick for Full Bloom champion (and most likely damning them to not winning the event, given my track record).
Sleeper Picks
I’ve talked before about the best “nationally inactive, locally active” players in the world, and I think Michael’s done quite a bit to earn his spot in the list of best “former Top 100” players who are still clearly that good in skill. We don’t really see that much of Michael vs. national competition outside of the Midwest, so this could be his first huge showing in years on this caliber. For what it’s worth, he’s usually done well at Full Bloom in the past, making top eight at the most recent ones with a controversial win over Kalamazhu and additional sets over HugS and PewPewU.
Another player with strong Midwest roots whom I’m thrilled to see here is obviously Blue, a player I’m quite fond of within the game and outside of it. In recent times, it seems like Blue’s picked up his activity, although he’s taken a break within February. About two months ago, he split sets with Panda in Florida, and he historically does quite well within the Midwest, about as well as any Fox player right under the Ginger/Zamu/Skerzo tier of spacies and alongside regional giants like essy and Preeminent.
It’s very crazy that TheRealThing was, in all likelihood, the closest a player has come to defeating Cody Schwab in losers bracket over the last four months. That alone makes him a player to look out for at Full Bloom, but don’t forget his other set accomplishments too. At that same tournament, he defeated Goosekhan, Kurv, and Joshman (who is here). His whole MO is that he shows up for a few big Midwest events a year to defeat a bunch of top players, so he’ll probably do that again here because time is a flat circle.
It is so crazy to me that Drephen looks better than he has in years; wasn’t he supposed to be retired? Following an excellent 2023 in which he barely missed Top 50, he went all the way to Smash Valley to defeat Chem and Wally, showcasing he still had it after a bit of a break from traveling. I would not be shocked to see him suddenly take one of the players right under the top three seeds extremely close – he could straight up catch them off guard.
Although we didn’t get to see much of bobby big ballz last year, he ended up defeating n0ne in a seeding upset before Top 32 at Genesis, only to then take Zain to game five before losing to him and then, later on, Zanya. Obviously, it’s very difficult to assess bobby’s play from one event or put a number to where he would finish on a national ranking, but I can’t imagine that he’s significantly worse than he was before his inactive, “get banned from Twitch and bigger events for not being streamable” period.
Despite not being at Genesis, the legend of PBI’s very own Khryke took a big step forward last weekend, as he won a regional over Kevin Maples, MDVA’s dominant number one player. It is pretty crazy that this player is Top 50, casually the fourth best active Marth in the world, good at basically every matchup, and even has a pocket Ice Climbers secondary, and yet he flies so under the radar. I would not be surprised to see him make a huge run here.
I miss Polish. Their Peach and Fox are so beautiful to watch and they are one of the most wholesome, captivating people I’ve ever met. They haven’t attended anything since The Big House 11 and, as far as Melee is concerned, they have gone completely AWOL. I hope they show up here and, more than doing well, just have fun.
For someone who had such spectacular showings throughout 2023 that earned herself such a high seed at Genesis, last weekend had to be disappointing for Salt. She ended up losing early to Logan and S2J for a lukewarm 25th place. This event, however, could offer an amazing return to form. She usually does great within fields of Top 25 players and rising regional talent; it just hasn’t really been in the cards for supermajors yet.
Top 8 Contenders
At this point, I’m convinced that if you eliminated Donkey Kong from the game, Soonsay would be Top 15. Jokes aside, and in all seriousness, Soonsay didn’t have a great Genesis weekend, as Joshman and Akir sent him home at 33rd place. I think he’ll do much better at Full Bloom, where he could have another rematch with Josh or an early Fox ditto against someone else. There will also be a lot of Captain Falcons and Marths in the field, two matchups I think he’s quite good at as well.
I think KJH had a deceptively “down” Genesis performance. It may not look amazing by his 33rd place finish, but this came by virtue of playing Mango and then having to play S2J in the losers bracket early. He looked quite strong vs. Gahtzu, and he has broadly been trending upward over the last six months or so. Maybe this is just my inner “Spacie” Jam coming out, but KJH vs. a Midwest-heavy field is someone I’d happily bet on.
Obviously, if I say that for KJH, I have to say it even more so for the current ruler of Michigan, Ossify. He more or less lived up to the hype at Genesis, taking moky dangerously close out of the winners bracket and then proceeding to defeat SFOP and Khalid before running into an absolute nightmare for 17th in Axe. Replace Axe with literally anyone else in the world and I would have expected Ossify to continue going hamburgers in the rest of the tournament.
Losing to aMSa in winners bracket and then being one of multiple Top 20 players to fall under the suddenly resurgent Medz is not something I think you could reasonably hold against Aklo, not on its own. However, combined with his Eggdog Scramble 2 performance, it’s fair to say Aklo’s lately had a bit of a step back in his results at bigger events. With that said, this happens to a lot of people who break through into the next level like Aklo has done. It usually takes some time before players like Aklo get back to performing like they usually do and then gradually making adjustments to improve even further.
A world in which Joshman held on to a game five victory to end Hungrybox’s major top eight streak would have been so beautiful. Sadly, it was not in the cards, but Joshman still left Genesis with wins over Soonsay and Faust. He’s actually been quite active in travel this year, having won each of Mountain Mania and NCK Remastered in the Atlantic South, while also going to Altitude Sickness in Colorado and Genesis last weekend. Save for maybe Altitude Sickness, he’s done about as well as expected or slightly better; he could be due for a huge performance here. Honestly, part of me just wonders if he can outright win, but then I remember Zain and Mango are supposed to be here. Or maybe he just beats them anyway.
Main Contenders
I know he didn’t make the top eight as expected last weekend, but I honestly wasn’t too discouraged by Mango at Genesis. All things considered, Jmook and Hungrybox ended up being tough draws for him and were still mostly competitive or winnable sets if a few things turned out differently. Neither of them are here, which benefits Mango, as does the fast-faller-heavy crowd. I want to see how he performs against Cody or Zain; last year, it looked hopeless, but from a game tape perspective, I don’t think he’s washed or mailing it in.
Zain had the weight of winning a possible third Genesis title heading into last week’s event, and was one red Yoshi away from potentially doing it. I fully expect him to bulldoze every player attending Full Bloom outside of this group; within it, I think it’s a bit more interesting. He hasn’t played Cody in a traditional set since The Big House 11 and has since only played him in The Match. With Mango, the two haven’t played since July at GOML, which feels like ages ago.
Lastly, we get into my pick to win Full Bloom and end the Monday Morning Marth major curse: Cody Schwab. He just looks totally unstoppable right now, and for the reasons I began this column with. Assuming he plays Fox and that this ends up being a bonafide major, I see basically no reason to view him as anything less than the overwhelming favorite to win this event and basically any tournament he enters moving forward.