How do you break a slump of not winning majors? Apparently for Zain, the answer is as simple as going to Canada. Following a stretch of events in which he barely missed the finish line, lost to players he usually beats, and even missed a top eight, Zain won GOML: Forever last weekend: his third straight GOML and defeating Hungrybox, SDJ, Salt, and Aklo as well. The win gave Zain his second major win of the year, complementing his Battle of BC 7 victory and adding a nineteenth major win to his career resume.
Along with Zain’s performance, two Jigglypuffs stole the show at GOML. The first one was more expected in Hungrybox, the runner up who beat moky, aMSa, Joshman, Wizzrobe, and SDJ. The other one, however, was SDJ, whose shocking third place performance came by virtue of making history twice. Not only did they become first player to beat Hungrybox in a Jigglypuff mirror match since Mang0 at Pound 4, SDJ also became the first Jigglypuff player outside of Hungrybox to take a set from Cody Schwab since 42nd back in 2018.
Another great storyline coming out of GOML was Wizzrobe’s surprising run to fourth place. Coming into this event as the fourteenth seed, he proceeded to upset the third seed moky, hold off the 43 seed RapMonster – the MD/VA Luigi phenomenon who had an insane run to ninth place – and then take home two more big wins over Aura and Cody.
With so much to talk about, and so little time before work, I wasn’t sure what to talk about this week. So in typical fashion when I don’t know how to structure a column, I just picked a few topics that I thought were interesting to break down for today’s column. Hopefully you think they’re interesting too.
Melee Influencers of 2025
Earlier this year, I wrote about what I perceived as a gradual shift in Melee’s cultural and streaming ecosystem: one that’s moved more toward influencer-style deals with top players and personalities. I cited the increased presence of majors and regionals alike streaming their events on the main channels of players like Hungrybox and Mang0, and that’s certainly continued to be the case in 2025. But what does it look like exactly from a numbers perspective?
Using Sullygnome, I’ve decided to compare 2024 to 2025 in terms of discovering the top 10 Twitch channels for Melee. Obviously 2025 isn’t complete yet, and 2024 is, so for the purpose of clarity, I’ve organized each stream channel in terms of ‘average hours watched per month’ rather than cumulative totals.
NOTE: Technically speaking, the numbers I’m using for 2025 are just for the last 180 days (since January 8). But for brevity’s sake, however, I’m treating them as “first half” numbers because the first week of January was fairly low in terms of Melee viewership anyhow.
| 2024 Top 10 | Watch time hours / month | 2025 Top 10 | Watch time hours / month |
| mang0 | 130,414 | mang0 | 116,344 |
| genesisgg | 28,089 | ZainNaghmi | 83,228 |
| VGBootCamp | 27,550 | Hungrybox | 34,983 |
| GalintGaming | 27,402 | Mew2King | 26,603 |
| Hungrybox | 24,928 | genesisgg | 23,490 |
| slimeIRL | 22,780 | genesisgg_2 | 19,121 |
| ZainNaghmi | 22,737 | GalintGaming | 17,690 |
| btssmash | 22,546 | CodySchwab | 16,435 |
| CodySchwab | 18,633 | NounsEsports | 14,023 |
| bobbybigballz19 | 16,309 | VGBootCamp | 12,769 |
While I don’t think these numbers are necessarily indicative of what the rest of the year will look like, there have been some changes in the landscape worth talking about, the first of which is the guy at number one. For most of this year, Mang0 continued to be the leading streamer in Melee, but we have no idea how this will turn out for the rest of 2025. Even as tournament organizers (sans my good friend The Cheat) quiver and run away from the prospect of saying “Mang0 is banned for six months/a year,” the reasonable outsider guess seems to be that he’s not attending events in the short-term and probably not streaming Melee for a while.
Now, I never want to try to make a “positive” out of what’s been an unambiguously terrible situation. But I will say that I think each of Zain and Hungrybox are poised to fill a void in the Melee streaming ecosystem. They have both been streaming quite a bit of Melee this year, with Zain’s Ranked Iron Man grind really dominating the pre-Genesis period and Hungrybox himself actually starting to stream more Melee; for reference, Hungrybox had 395 total streamed Melee hours last year, and this year he’s already at 305. Obviously, not every Mang0 subscriber is going to suddenly abandon ship and find new channels to subscribe to, but his absence does create a hole in the landscape that people like Zain and Hungrybox are in a good position to economically benefit from in one particular way.
Mew2King’s presence as a Melee influencer has been a very strange surprise of this year. At 896 hours of streamed Melee (as I’m writing this), he’s already crossed last year’s count of 658. But let’s call balls and strikes here: the response to his return has been mixed, to say the least. It’s coincided with an extremely dark moment in the scene, as well as a significantly toxic shift in Melee’s online environment. Broadly speaking, the vibes are not entirely pleasant here, as shown from how his campaign for inclusion at the Nounsvitational did not necessarily receive the most positive feedback.
I’m not inherently against the idea of a scene where Mew2King is a more active participant. The story of a former member of the Five Gods coming back to compete at majors could be a cool development. Some of his sessions with people like Hungrybox, Salt, and Chickenman400 have been fun to watch from afar. If he’s here to stay, I hope he can be a healthy, positive figure in the community for 2025, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have any hesitations. Until Mew2King goes to an event, competes, showcases consistent community involvement, and generally proves that he’s not a bozo, I’m not convinced that his increased participation is anything other than a brief fad. I’d be happy to be proven wrong though; I would love for a legend of the game to return if he’s committed to the community – just not with the expectation that it should be the other way around.
Newcomers to Major Dark Horse Contention
Do you want to know one of the scene-defining stats over the last year? No? Well, too bad. Since last year’s GOML – approximately 15 majors ago – we have had eight new-time winners finals appearances. They are as follows:
- Soonsay at GOML X
- Junebug at Supernova 2024
- Aklo at Riptide 2024
- Trif at Genesis X2
- Nicki at Nouns Bowl 2025
- Joshman at Nouns Bowl 2025
- Krudo at Tipped Off 16: Safari
- SDJ at GOML: Forever
For a comparison point, here’s what the previous fifteen majors looked like before that.
- Literally no one from Collision 2023 to Pat’s House 4
And if you’re curious about the fifteen events before those fifteen events, we had three newcomers (NOTE: Jmook at Genesis 8 barely missed the timing/criteria).
- moky at Genesis 9
- lloD at Super Smash Con 2022
- aMSa at Double Down 2022
How Have My Sleeper Picks Done?
Near the beginning of the year, I picked ten players whom I thought had a great chance of breaking out to the Top 100 this year. I considered them sleeper picks, limiting myself to players that had never made Top 100, never made the ballot, and had never been considered in my column as sleeper picks in previous years. I have not been entirely successful with this series, but after a few attempts, I think I’ve hit on a few key players in my 2025 column.
I’ll start with RapMonster, who finally had his big breakout party of sorts last weekend at GOML. There, the MD/VA Luigi icon defeated Krudo and Preeminent on his way to just barely miss top eight, losing only to SDJ and Wizzrobe. Already having wins over SluG and Maelstrom, RapMonster was likely a lock for the Summer SSBMRank ballot because of his regional success within the Mid-Atlantic, but I was uncertain if he’d actually make the list. Clearly that’s changed; I think he’ll probably end up in the 30s somewhere, and that could rise by the end of the year. If he attended Unranked, he’d be one of the two leading favorites to win (Zealot being the other one).
Zasa is another player who has rewarded my faith in the small number of big events she’s attended. Each of her wins this year over Drephen, Epoodle, and TheRealThing are sneaky good; they probably wouldn’t get Zasa on the ballot right now, but given where these players will likely end up on the final list by the end of the year, they could age very well. Her only losses at majors or regionals are to other Top 100 ballot talent anyhow. The real issue with her is activity; last year, she was in a similar position come Patchwork 2024, and she then didn’t attend any other significant out of region tournament. This year, she wasn’t even at Patchwork 2025. If Zasa goes AWOL again, it would really be a shame.
We then get into a third person I’ve talked about before in this column: my dear friend DarkGenex. It seems like his approach to competing this year is to simply attend as many tournaments as possible, and while his year’s had some lows, he’s had some pretty notable highs, the biggest of which is his 17th place run at Nouns Bowl, where he beat SluG and JoJo. DarkGenex also has regional sets over 404Cray and Mot$, which I think will age well, but his sets over each of Dacky and Juicebox are trickier to assess in the context of 2025 Melee, where neither player has performed as well on a major level. While DarkGenex has some stinkers in there, I don’t think any of them are totally disqualifying because he attends an ungodly number of events. I’m going to predict that he makes the Top 100 somewhere in the 80s range, around where Bekvin finished last year.
Within that range or just outside of it as another heavily active top player/commentator hybrid is Mono. He is in the fortunate position of being fairly consistent, yet in the unfortunate position of being in a range of players where the expected seeding is a really tall hurdle to clear. The typical 2025 major for Mono is somehow running into a player like lloD or aMSa and losing or then having a coin flip matchup with a peer before then having to play a Top 50 player or something like that even if he wins. Granted, there’s nothing on Mono’s resume I would consider an especially ‘bad’ loss or awful showing, as they’re mostly to comparable peers. In fact, he has some good major and regional set wins there (Balloon Day, Boyd, and JoJo stand out). Given Mono’s activity I think he will probably make the ballot by the end of the year, but in my experience, the way panelists tend to prioritize ‘resume headliner’ wins may hurt him. It will be really close whether or not he sneaks onto the list.
A fifth person I felt very confident in this year was i4. I still think she could do well, especially with a big regional coming up this weekend in the United Kingdom, but she’s had a couple mixed showings within North America. With wins over Maher and Stockholm Syndrome, she’s shown a pound-for-pound capability of competing with ballot-level talent, but she doesn’t necessarily dominate them, as she’s had two losses to capable regional talent (Panos and CakeAssault). I could, however, see her beating more EU talent and obtaining enough cumulative wins there to sneak onto the ballot by the end of the year. And frankly more reps against the top level in North America can only benefit her; she’s hardly the only European to ever struggle over there. It happens. For whatever it’s worth though, i4 has pre-local sets over Beezy and OG Kid; while I don’t think they are meaningful for a Top 100 resume, they showcase an ability to compete with comparable talent (even if at far lower stakes).
I’m going to include Electroman and s-f together because they are both power ranked in their respective regions and have clearly taken steps forward in local achievements, with Electroman continuing to remain near the top of Massachusetts and s-f finally being ranked in SoCal. Purely from a major-heavy and regional-heavy perspective though, I don’t think either of them are in a position to make the Top 100 ballot. In s-f’s case, his very high attendance has mostly been him treading water with the occasional big performance and the occasional underperformance; just by results (and not commenting on his growth as a player), I think he’s still far off from ballot status. In Electroman’s case, he’s been busy with his non-Melee pursuits and hasn’t left New England. They feel like inverses of the other one in terms of what’s ‘stopping’ them from being Top 100 via a resume perspective, yet both are strong players who could just as easily turn the corner in the second half of the year.
Negat!ve, HOBORG, and Valk are the last three players I chose. Disclaimer: I respect these three as individuals and certainly do not define their worth as people by video game tournaments, but they definitely are at the bottom of our status update on sleeper picks. Negat!ve is fresh off a strong GOML where he beat DarkGenex, but apparently he’s done with competing seriously once medical school begins for him. Despite HOBORG’s activity, the results haven’t really been there, and he suffers from the problem of being in a region that’s very good against his particular character. Other than a stray set over Graves, I haven’t seen much of Valk at all this year outside the Pacific Northwest. At the risk of sounding like a jerk here, I’m sticking a fork in each of their chances to make Top 100.