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Monday Morning Marth: February 5

Edwin Budding
Published February 5, 2024

I loved watching Valhalla last weekend. It’s rare to see a regional tournament where you can roughly pinpoint eight players that you know for a fact are very good (“Top 100 level”), yet have no real idea how to distinguish from each other. What’s even cooler is that the eventual winner of this tournament was former Smash Summit 9 attendee Pricent. They have been such a rare sight at events since the pandemic, and yet clearly still good enough to win a stacked event of Valhalla’s caliber. The same could be said for Nicki, the runner-up and someone who might have outright won it too. The success of these two players naturally had me thinking about the scene’s biggest sleeping giants  – the best formerly ranked players.

In today’s column, I’m going to bring up ten former Top 100 players whom I want to see return the most in 2024. Now, because this is such a large category of players, I’ve given myself some restrictions and broad guidelines to follow:

  • No selections who qualified for the Top 100 ballot in 2023.
  • No banned players or players who fail the “vibe check.”
  • No players who made top eight at Valhalla IV. 
  • The player must have been nationally active enough or in a sufficient capacity to warrant semi-realistic consideration for this year.
  • The player must have made the Top 100 before. 

Cactuar

NorCal’s first entry into my list of “inactive Top 100 players” is a very funny one in Cactuar. His record of success practically speaks for itself. I still think about all the times he JV4’d top Captain Falcons using only Fox’s nair – or when he randomly defeated Wizzrobe with Marth at HTC Throwdown. He is a very strange, but important player in the history of the game.

At the same time, I actually don’t have much faith that he will attend many events in 2024. In fact, he’s not even registered for Genesis X. But with that said, the one tournament he has from last year is Genesis 9, where he beat Shroomed and null. Five months before that tournament, he had a strong showing at Nightlife, where he beat Umarth and Nintendude. Remember: I’m balancing all three traits of likelihood of returning, my desire to see someone come back, and whom I think is most likely to beat people’s asses. Say what you want about the first category – Cactuar has the other two on lock.

YungWaff

At this point, it almost feels trite to continue praising Brandon as a player and mentioning how his competitive achievements are genuinely underrated. However, it’s worth noting that he’s still pretty good at the game. Competing hasn’t even been his focus this decade; I’m picking Brandon because I genuinely think he has the sauce as a player. Given his efforts in content creation and his ability to contribute in other areas of the community too, I think he is a great free agent for sponsors as well.

Although he didn’t have a Top 100 win in 2023, he did beat Bekvin, who made the ballot. He only has two events, so it’s hard to extrapolate anything, but if your losses as a “non Top 100 player” are Cody Schwab, Mango, Azel, and essy, you’re doing pretty well for yourself. The big difficulty with Brandon is the fact that he might just have other priorities at a tournament. Regardless, he has a history of beating some of the best players in the world when his heart is in competition.

FatGoku

FatGoku has retired from competing at a national level, but in my opinion, it’s clear that he’s still the best player within Oregon. His experimental period with Falco showed that he remained an elite threat within Oregon, and his Fox has continued to basically wreck havoc upon promising regional talent like Stiv and Yamasaki. Now, I want to be clear here that I fully support FatGoku’s turn away from seriously competing at a national level. But I’m just saying that were opportunities to arise where he competes in Oregon against strong out-of-region talent, I truly believe he’d rise to the occasion.

For what it’s worth, I think FatGoku’s done quite well for himself against the broader talent of the Pacific Northwest. At Ghost Town last fall, he had a neat loser’s run where he beat Stiv, Fishbait, and Nickemwit, only losing to Graves, one of my breakout picks for 2024. I would expect to see FatGoku do well at somewhere like Smash Camp: New Lands this year, if not another West Coast event.

Stango

One of my favorite weekly Smash rituals back in the late 2010s was watching Stango utterly beat down R2DLiu at every local in Philadelphia. To this day, it remains one of the most lopsided local rivalries ever. It was genuinely shocking; R2DLiu was – and is currently – a very strong player. Stango would use this experience farming a worthy peer to make the Top 100 in 2019.

Today, he’s more known for his status as a threat to win Project + majors, but every now and then, Stango returns to Melee and does well for himself. Last year, he entered four tournaments, exiting them with wins over Dawson, JJM, 404Cray, Jude, and Skerzo. All six of his losses came to a Top 100 Sheik or to Khryke, which is pretty wild. Now, the problem with Stango is he might just DQ out of a tournament if he feels like it, but it’s pretty clear that he’s still a deadly opponent.

Michael

One of the more quiet local storylines in recent memory is the return of Michael to the top of the Chicago scene. In addition to remembering him for his uniquely soul crushing legacy against Ice Climbers during the wobbling era, you might recognize Michael as the former National Arcadian champion. If it’s not that, then surely, you’ll remember him as “Michael 41 billion,” someone whose rise to prominence initially came through playing countless sets on Smashladder.

The current No. 1 of Chicago, Michael’s basically been a lock for top 2 at every Tripoint he enters, if not the favorite to win them. He doesn’t really leave Illinois much, but he’s done great vs. out-of-state talent in the decent number of events he’s attended featuring them, leaving 2023 with wins over Lowercase hero, essy, and Preeminent. Michael is attending Full Bloom later this month – be sure to watch him at this tournament and other Midwest events throughout the rest of the year.

Wally

It should be no surprise to know that the guy who literally beat Zain is still amazing at the game, even when he DQs from tournaments (such as GOML) whenever he feels like it. On a national level, it’s hard to argue against Wally being ‘retired,’ but when he’s in his comfort zone within Tristate, he’s clearly continued to show signs of being a great and ‘sort of active’ player.

Most recently, he took a set over Mot$ at Failsafe Winter 2024. Wally beat him the time before that too at Fireside Open 2023, where he also beat Bbatts (for the second time in the year) and 404Cray. You could put Wally against any of the best players in Tristate and he’d have a strong chance of winning; that’s enough in my mind to make his results at tournaments worth paying attention to. Even if he is not anywhere near invested in his results, I certainly am. Is that weird of me to say? Who knows?

Swedish Delight

Sticking with New Jersey yet again, I have to shout out Swedish Delight. He’s now settled into a comfortable routine of attending maybe one or two really big events a year and defeating a top out-of-region player. I still think he could randomly make a major top eight if the cards fell his way, and if he was in practice.

Most notably last year, he beat Squid and upset Zuppy before coming within inches of defeating Magi at Shine. Even at The Function 3, mere months later, Swedish Delight had an otherwise great run spoiled by bracket double jeopardy in having to play Kevin Maples twice; he still beat 404Cray. While it’s obviously hard to bet on a doctor coming back and competing at any big capacity in Melee, clearly it’s not totally impossible. No, I don’t think Swedish Delight is directly comparable to lloD right now, but he obviously remains very good.

Rishi

For a brief period last year, it genuinely seemed like Rishi was in the best competing shape of his career, and yet this would never be reflected by a ranking. He only attended Nightclubs and Collision, so he ended up being inactive for the whole SSBMRank season. In recent times, he was in Europe for an extended stay, but didn’t attend anything due to work obligations and a shift in priorities.

At the same time, we can’t just ignore the fact that he casually beat Trif and KoDoRiN – two Top 20 players – on the way to ninth place at Collision. With a local win over Hax$ last year, as well as sets over Bbatts and K8A, Rishi has also proven the ability to hang with the best players of Tristate. While we haven’t seen him at an offline tournament since last June, historically speaking, Rishi tends to do pretty well himself after long breaks. I don’t know what his relationship with competing is right now, but I also know that I’d love to see another Rishi-Zain classic.

Medz

Medz has had an interesting career. He occupied a spot as a notable hidden boss for a long time, initially being known as the “Fox vs. Pikachu guy” who somehow could take sets from Axe, then he suddenly became the No. 1 of Arizona and later came to be one of the definitive players from both ends of Fox/Marth. Every time you try to put this guy into a box, he somehow evolves and adds something else to his impact on the scene – and he does this while balancing his personal obligations with playing.

While Medz didn’t make the Top 100 ballot in 2023, it was basically by the margins. He only attended Genesis 9 for majors, and he needed two majors to qualify. But in the regional data we have for him, it’s hard to see him as anything significantly lower than a “Top 50 caliber” player. With wins over Axe, Spark, Khalid, CPU0, Smash Papi, Khryke, Azel, Lucky, Free Palestine, and Chango, he was basically beating Top 25 to 100 players at every notable event.

SFAT

A Top 100 without SFAT still seems so crazy to think about, but it’s what happened last year after a shift in priorities kept him away from competing on a national level. You could hardly blame him – SFAT’s had one of the most extraordinary careers in the history of the game and had been Top 10 to 20 for practically a decade. What’s even crazier is the fact that if he enters a tournament, the little data we have points to him still being a safe bet for doing well.

Early in 2023, and well before his stretch of inactivity, it seemed like SFAT would once again be a lock for the list. He beat Faust and Eddy Mexico at Genesis before going on to win in-region tournaments over the likes of S2J and Umarth, as well as having a respectable showing at Major Upset, where he did about as well as expected. It was after that in which SFAT’s activity took a big step back, as did his caliber of results, but I’m inclined to think this ran downstream from him not being too invested in competing. He’s currently signed up for Genesis X, and I think it’d be foolish to sleep on his chances of doing extremely well. I’d love to see him come back in full force.

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