Cody Schwab entered Tipped Off 16 with perhaps the most to gain out of all the leading contenders. Following three electrifying sets with Zain, Cody left the tournament in first place, winning it in wild fashion, passing Leffen for all-time major wins, effectively locking up the title of best player in the world for the first half of 2025. Along with defeating Zain in both sets of grand finals after an early loss in winners bracket, Cody also beat the likes of Mang0, aMSa, and the event’s breakout star Krudo.
For his part, Krudo had the best showing of his career. Following a win over Wizzrobe before Top 32, Krudo went on to defeat moky, Mang0, and aMSa en route to his first winners finals appearance ever. His presence there marks yet another newcomer to this part of bracket over the last six months, with each of Joshman, Nicki, and Trif making history in similar fashion. Though Krudo’s path was unique, it reflects an emergent reality within top-level 2025 Melee: that anyone in the Top 25 can come shockingly close to winning a major.
In fact, the biggest shock of the event may have come from who wasn’t in the top eight. Largely thanks to 63 seed Maelstrom, as well as Nicki, Hungrybox, the 2 seed of the tournament, left Tipped Off 16 at a grisly 33rd, the single worst major showing of his career. His showing, along with the placements of fellow top eight seeds Jmook (25th), moky (17th), and many others, shows the flip side to that emergent reality; that anyone who can win a major can seemingly flame out with a dangerous enough field.
I have so much to dive into from Tipped Off, and yet seemingly so little time to properly structure it in a satisfying way. In today’s Monday Morning Marth though, I’ll be taking Patron questions in a special mailbag edition. It’s been a while, and I had some great questions for this week, so let’s jump right into it.
NOTE: For readability, I have reworded some of these questions and combined them if they fit a similar category.
Who will have the highest summer rank debut? – Hufff
Easily OkayP. After having never been ranked before, he’s come out of seemingly nowhere to absolutely bulldoze multiple Top 25 players. It was ludicrous last weekend that he had to play Ossify and Wizzrobe for 33rd place; he is both way better than his seed as is his resume over the last six months.
However, I know that this question was asked so that I would mention Graves. In the spirit of tying up a loose end and acknowledging the source of this topic, Graves looks like a safe lock for Top 50 right now. My guess is that he ends in the safer end of the 40s range alongside someone established like Preeminent or a quietly rising star of this year like Holiday (last year’s No. 100, who had a sneaky run to 25th place last weekend and is probably a safe pick for Top 50 this summer).
What made this version of Cody/Zain different? – bluerosetori
Was this your favorite Zain/Cody encounter?” – louise
Funnily enough, the premier rivalry of top-level Melee doesn’t appear that often in grand finals. We have their legendary Shine 2023 sets, in which they took turns beating up each other until Cody clutched it out, then two beat-downs from Zain at Riptide 2024 and Battle of BC 7, and now these Tipped Off 16 grand finals. I guess you have The Match too, which fits the vibe check of a high-stakes set, but I would compare last weekend’s grand finals to the Shine one in terms of being a pure slobber-knocker of each player taking turns beating the crap out of the other one before culminating in an epic last-stock slop-fest. You know, tournament Melee.
In fact, I think that these grand finals actually mirror the Shine one in another interesting way. Not to make the game all about rankings for the 99th time, but the thing that was really cool about the Shine grand finals was the fact that it was basically Cody’s last chance to challenge Zain for that year’s top spot due to Zain had come off a hot stretch of his own and leading the field in major count by a fair margin. This single victory from Cody started a stretch where he then went on to win the final Big House and dominate two regionals en route to his victory at The Match. Winning Shine 2023 is honestly one of the most consequential victories of modern Melee.
Conversely though, with Tipped Off 16, we now have Cody getting his third major of the year. With only GOML left in the summer for planned majors, Zain essentially has lost his chance to take the top spot from Cody. However, he still has the rest of the year to catch up to him. Because of the disparity in stakes, and, somewhat unfairly, due to the fact that we literally don’t know what happens afterward, I can’t put this above their Shine grand finals. For now, it’s number two for all time Zain-Cody classics. Maybe three after The Match.
Is Krudo peaking or breaking through? – Tuesday
I’m wrong about a lot of things in this column, but one of the few things I have been rewarded for as of lately is my belief in Krudo. A couple of years ago, I wrote a piece about whom I believe the Top 10 of 2025 would be, and right there, I had Mr. Battles himself. It took a minute for him to finally show up as a big guy on the major stage beyond making a top eight, but he finally did it. No, he’s not peaking; Krudo is here to stay. He’s really good.
What’s a cool Melee thing happening outside of gameplay? – Gumball
This could go in multiple directions. I talk about commentators a lot here and I’ve mentioned the rise of upstate New York as a prominent region, so I’ll try to avoid saying the same things here. In fact, just two weeks ago, I wrote about Ludwig’s gambit to make Supernova the biggest Melee event ever, so that’s probably still my strict answer for this section. However, I do want to mention something that I am very curious about, even if it’s not necessarily fitting the prompt. That would be the new approach of sorts that I believe most big Melee tournament organizers have taken to the community’s long history with Nintendo, and how this could play out in the public eye eventually.
In the mid-to-late 2010s boom of competitive Melee, and generally speaking, our major ecosystem was driven by people dedicated to making Melee a tier one esport, and for that matter, tying in the future of Melee to the future of competitive Smash as a whole. This involved quiet negotiations behind the scenes with Nintendo, throwing certain mod communities under the bus (like Project M), and in exchange, we got Splatoon booths at Apex or some stupid shit none of us care about (but presumably was worth it for organizers). Over time, and after their own misjudgments, our old leadership realized what a doomed prospect it would be to ever work with Nintendo in any serious capacity and have since run away from them when possible. Nowadays, and especially after the additional fall of Panda, who didn’t get the “don’t trust Nintendo” memo. whatever remains of this group of people has what I would personally interpret as a silently begrudging relationship with Nintendo. This is through the form of behind-the-scenes licensing agreements if the event gets big enough, quiet adherence to not do anything outrageous or immediately noticeable to Nintendo’s eyes, and a staunch commitment to not dare centralize the scene in any possible way that approaches the dreaded c-word.
With that said, hesitation from others has never stopped anyone from trying to run it right back. Now, I would not compare Nouns (or any subsidiaries of Nouns) individually directly to Panda, Beyond the Summit, Smash World Tour, or Golden Guardians, but I think they’ve operated as a strange hybrid of these four entities. From what I can tell, and purely neutrally speaking, I think that this group is trying to start a skeleton framework for a more consolidated major ecosystem in similar fashion to what SWT and Panda wanted to do. In addition to that, Nouns funds major events, sponsors top contributors to the scene, and it has enough people on its roster to take a bigger dive into multimedia content. My guess is that this is where Nouns heads toward next; developing a stronger social media brand within Melee itself the way that Golden Guardians did and leveraging its resources accordingly.
To my eyes – and I could be mistaken here because not all information about events is information I’m privy to – I don’t get the sense that Nouns gives a fuck about Nintendo. Based on my conversations with people behind the scenes, they fulfill the minimum requirements to not get chased by Nintendo (such as running a regular stage list), but the Smash people I knew involved in Melee things in any capacity for Nouns have basically no interest in ever expanding its goals beyond Melee itself and don’t seem to be interested in a circuit specifically. At the same time though, I do think their additional investment in Melee and apparent disinterest toward Nintendo makes for an interesting combination of traits, even if I sometimes wonder if this group is playing with fire.
Did Soonsay deserve better? – Flamingo Lettuce
Better than what? Playing Pikachu in Top 128? Yes, I wouldn’t wish that upon my worst enemy. Better than ninth place, which is ultimately where Soonsay’s nasty losers bracket run landed? Probably. I will say though: it’s not the first time for Soonsay in which he’s had a stupidly impressive tournament where he somehow landed out of top eight. It feels vaguely on brand for him to casually do things like beat n0ne again, reverse 4-stock Jmook, clutch out a game five set over moky, and defeat Ossify before barely running out of gas against lloD.
By the way, on the topic of absolutely killer runs that fell heartbreakingly short of top eight, I have to hand it to KoDoRiN. Fresh off a break from the game, he was truly given the Marth gauntlet from hell, with each of SluG, Axe, and Junebug awaiting him. And yet he left the tournament beating two of them (Junebug and SluG), along with defeating Drephen, Chem and Fiction. I think any human being, upon so many fierce battles, would naturally have nothing left in the tank in a ninth place match versus Trif, maybe the worst possible opponent other than aMSa and Zain for KoDoRiN to face in a specific marathon format.
What does Hungrybox’s 33rd place mean long term? Are we seeing Hungrybox no longer care as much because of his GENESIS win and win on Zain? Or is this just an uncharacteristically bad performance from him? – JCloud
Is this a freak accident for Hbox or a bad sign of things to come? Same for Jmook. – baller
Among a tiny group of people familiar with my column, I’ve gained a reputation, somewhat unfairly, but one that I lean into a little bit, of being a Hungrybox doubter. You would think that a weekend where he loses to Maelstrom and Nicki for the literal lowest point of his career would be fodder for people like me. You can envision a cartoon version of a Hungrybox hater salivating at the thought of a miserable Hungrybox that believes he’s forever out of the number one race. But no, I don’t think he’s out of the number one race because of one very bad tournament, and I don’t take any pleasure in Hungrybox losing.
Things like this can just happen now. We are in the era where practically every year is guaranteed to have an event with a seed in the 40s to 60s range that is just going to beat one of the top seeds. It happened when Fizzwiggle beat Mang0, it happened when Wally beat Zain (though Wally should have never been seeded that low), it happened when BING beat Cody, and it happened last weekend when Maelstrom beat Hungrybox.
Don’t get me wrong though: it is a historic-caliber result. I am obviously not going to sit here and tell you that I wasn’t shocked. But truthfully, with Hungrybox in particular, he has had some really close calls with this “type” of opponent over the last year. Including his ramp up to eventually winning Genesis, players like Stone, Justus, and mgmg have taken him to the brink, and we know that people like Preeminent and Panda have beaten him before. The shock factor from his performance also comes from the fact that he ended up finishing 33rd, which looks awful on paper. At the same time though, he really just happened to not win a very close set vs. a caliber of opponent that we’ve seen nearly defeat him, and then he ran into a major dark horse early.
I may accuse Hungrybox of a lot of things: throwing online sets for content, choosing to lose, etc. Most of it is ironic. In all seriousness, I would not accuse him of lacking motivation or now having peaked. The guy finally beat Zain a month ago. It was a bad weekend; it happens.
What’s the most under the radar fun storyline/player right now? – Poison
There’s a ton of good contenders here, many of which I’ve already written about a couple weeks ago in my storylines write-up about the different types of potential major dark horses. To briefly acknowledge them, they are “which rising star Fox wins a major first,” “which wacky mid tier or floaty wins a major first,” and “who becomes the first woman to win a major?” At the end of last year, I also discussed SDJ’s status as the third greatest Jigglypuff ever and a sleeper dark horse to win a major themself, which looks more possible following an event where they beat Plup and Nicki (again).
To make this more meaningful, I’m trying to think about things I have not already written about. That means I can’t discuss friends who are rising in results like the wonderful DarkGenex or lovely editor of this column s-f, let alone anyone else I’ve talked about as a rising player before in detail. I also cannot write about how cool it is that there are more women in the Top 100 now than ever and how this seems to be on an upward trend in 2025 as well – not because it’s not cool, but because I don’t think it’s hidden by this column at all.
Wanna know what is hidden though? I think Kevbot has had an absolutely wild first half of the year that seemingly no one has paid attention to. After years of seemingly blending into the vague territory of “NorCal PR” or “Top 100 ballot” level, this guy has taken his game to the next level. He has lately farmed the hell out of Philadelphia – a very strong region, mind you – as well as nabbed great wins over Dawson, Nanami, Khryke, Zanya, Holiday, and Umarth, among others.
If you had to choose one player right now who could theoretically win a bo5 against zain and cody back-to-back, who would you pick? – gold
Nicki. His sets with Cody have given me no reason to believe they can’t continue to remain competitive, and Nicki literally beat Zain the last time they played. I think he’d also have the endurance to play through sets against them back-to-back.
Where does Zain v Cody rivalry rank all-time? – anakonda
This is a fun one because the answer is anticlimactic. When I examined this question in late 2023, I had it at number seven, unquestionably underneath Mango-Armada, Mango-Hungrybox, Armada-Hungrybox, Armada-Leffen, and Mango-Zain, and a tad lower than Mango-M2K. A year and a half later, you’d think that I would have enough ammo to move Zain-Cody way up the list. But I think the highest I can move it up to is number six.
When examining a rivalry for all-time consideration, you have to measure the following: how competitive the players actually were against one another, their scale of their matches in the grand scheme of Melee history, their quality of sets, and their quantity of sets. To their credit, Zain-Cody have amazing sets, the highest level of tournament gameplay ever, and a really interesting dynamic to their matches in that they are both post-Five Gods era players. But for reference, Mango and Mew2King played against one another as both were in the top echelon for ten years. Cody and Zain have been at this level together for about five, with Zain being before at the top for longer and having a more established history of classic sets with Mango, even as that rivalry has now gone totally in Zain’s favor.
Granted, I think the average quality of the typical Mango-Mew2King set is actually pretty bad, so I would be happy to take the jump there. In good conscience though, I can’t put Zain-Cody higher than Mango-Zain yet. Even their sets are better on average than the typical Mango-Zain set, they need something like a Smash Summit 11 grand finals or The Big House 9 grand finals or more time to have me consider moving them up. Shine 2023 and Tipped Off 16 are close, but the comparison point here is arguably two contenders for greatest set ever. It will take a bit.
Who would you pick for a hypothetical Melee Stats Free Agent Showcase in 2025? – Ambisinister
At the risk of airing out our creative process of sorts in public, I will try to keep this short. The Free Agent Showcase had one simple premise: what could someone do if they had finally had one chance to live their Melee dream? When looking at people to sponsor, we always tried to look for hidden rising talent that had unusual barriers to cross when it came to traveling for Melee. The classic “success” case is when we sponsored Pipsqueak. Now, determining the next Pipsqueak of 2025 is very difficult, if not trying to catch lightning in a bottle. Even to a less internationally recognized degree, a lot of players that come to mind have already broken out (like Maelstrom or Blue or so many other people we talked about a long time ago back when this was in the cards).
For now though, I’m going to say tentatively say Zasa. In addition to really strong results, she has a unique take on her character, as well as a pretty funny personal “brand.” I think it captures a distinct audience in Melee that strangely crosses over with the Melee Stats base. You could totally imagine a group of people wearing our merchandise hooting, hollering, and barking all Saturday long as Zasa goes on a monster loser’s run at a major.
How does Cody’s current three-peat shape up vs, the most recent major threepeats? – Coffee
This is fun question – this decade, there’s only been two players to three peat majors (surprise: Cody and Zain), and they’ve both done it twice. Honestly though, Cody’s stretches have somehow felt more dominant, even as he’s been a bit sloppier in terms of dropping winners sets. If I had to place this current three-peat stretch, it’s probably number two after Cody’s late 2023 to early 2024 run of total dominance, when he won the final Shine, the final Big House, and Genesis in a row, as well as defeating Zain in The Match and cramming in two big events over Jmook in there to boot. In that period, Cody legitimately felt unstoppable and like his losses were totally self-inflicted.
I guess I’d have to look at the specific head-to-heads to cross-reference this, and maybe that’s what you were looking for in this answer. But this is what my gut tells me right now in terms of notable tournament victories and impressiveness of them together. I think it’s really difficult to top three major wins (two of which are supermajors), a couple ‘almost major’ wins, and the most high-stakes FT10 in the history of the game.
Is the field getting that much better or are the goats of old just not performing at levels of consistency they once did? – Bekvin
Definitely the former. I understand the temptation to view it as the latter given how unprecedented a 33rd place finish is for someone like Hungrybox but legit everybody in the top level has to take losses on the chin at some point or another. You have to keep in mind the unusual nature of supermajors too. All it takes is one bad day for two seeds for them to suddenly meet for a 33rd place match, and for one of them to suddenly be perceived as totally washed.
Who is the current best Sheik? – ycz6
This is a great question. After last weekend, my gut instinctively told me Krudo, but then I wondered if Jmook’s year was really as relatively weak as I remembered. Below, I’ve gathered their major and big regional head-to-heads (excluding sets that lacked competitive integrity or came in relatively unserious circumstances like weekday local tournaments or any time alcohol is involved).
| Player | Wins | Losses |
| Krudo | Mang0
moky Jmook Aura lloD Ossify Salt Magi aMSa Polish Wizzrobe Fiction Lucky Khryke Sirmeris Bbatts Mot$ |
SaltInYourEye
MOF Trif Salt Axe Joshman Hungrybox Zain Cody Schwab x 2 |
| Jmook | Cody Schwab
Axe Aura Ossify Salt Trif Junebug aMSa MOF Fiction Zuppy OkayP Zamu Zealot Rikzz Stiv Lowercase hero Komodo Juicebox Inky |
Panda
Fiction MOF Soonsay Junebug Axe Krudo Hungrybox x 3 Joshman x 2 Cody Schwab x 2 |
I think it’s really close, but Krudo’s superior supermajor showing last weekend and roughly comparable performances across the board honestly make me want to go in his direction. He has a more outrageous outlier loss, but if you look at all the events they attended together, Krudo’s left them typically doing as well as or much better than Jmook. Purely based on 2025 results, I’m taking Krudo.