Without his biggest rival in attendance, Zain vanquished the field last weekend at Collision 2025, defeating Hungrybox, lloD, and Aklo. It was his fourth major win of the year, as well as the twenty-first of his career. This brings Zain to just one major underneath Armada for all-time major wins.
Hungrybox, the historical leader for that same category, ended up in second place, with the fourth seeded Joshman right behind him in third place. A big surprise underneath these two players was lloD, a former Collision top eight placer who went on a tear to fourth place, in which he notably upset moky and SDJ.
lloD was not the only underdog run of note in Collision top eight. Following multiple years of coming close, Zamu finally made her first major top eight appearance, finishing out of the event in seventh place. She was particularly strong vs. Sheik throughout the weekend, upsetting each of Krudo and Jmook, though she also defeated 404Cray and Freezus as well. By making a major top eight, Zamu became the fourth woman to achieve such a feat in 2025, joining MOF, Magi, and Salt.
In my opinion, these are the three biggest stories of this event. However, with much to unpack from it, I’ve dedicated the rest of this column to overviewing other interesting results. Consider it a loose recap of everything interesting you might have missed at Collision.
Other Top 8 Storylines
Before Collision, Nicki publicly announced that he would likely take a break from traveling for Melee after the tournament. If this holds up, Collision was a strong way for his summer to end: returning to a top eight following a few down events. In his redemption run of sorts, Nicki notably defeated Zamu, Axe, moky (for the first time), and Jmook, with his final game over Jmook being the closest thing that I’ve ever seen to a JV5 in top level tournament Melee. For one match, Nicki received no damage from Jmook despite throwing away two stocks at zero percent.
Aklo and SDJ each did well as the two remaining Tristate representatives in the top eight. For Aklo, the event marks another fifth place for him in line with Supernova earlier this month. In SDJ’s case, this was a modest return to form in which they defeated Faith, Nicki, and Trif. Ironically, their tournament ended at the hands of Aklo, who eliminated them for seventh place. As I’ll overview in the next section, this wasn’t the only time that Aklo had to beat someone from his region.
Top 32
One of the biggest breakout performances from last weekend came from Epoodle, an enigmatic Marth player from New York City. After making the summer Top 50 and having a quiet Supernova, Epoodle laid ashes for several opponents at Collision. Though he’d lose to Kevbot and Aklo for ninth place, Epoodle took down each of max, Kevin Maples, 404Cray, and, most shockingly, SluG in a dominant 3-0. With seemingly all of Tristate shouting behind him for every set – chanting unholy things I will not repeat in this column – Epoodle had the best major performance of his career.
Similarly placing in ninth place with less fanfare, however, was Jmook, who placed to his seed. While he was upset by Nicki early in the event, he ended up overcoming a gauntlet of Sheiks (Swedish Delight, Foxy Grandpa, and Spark) before then falling to Zamu. It is admittedly strange to consider barely missing top eight as a good performance for someone who has literally won Collision, but this was a tough bracket. All considered, Jmook fans should hold onto some hope heading into later majors. The return is coming, and it will be sweet.
Was this a disappointing performance for Axe? As the sixth seed, his ninth place finish certainly seems to suggest so. However, viewing it this way would be missing the forest for the trees. His losses came against a top three seed of the tournament and arguably his second worst matchup in the field. The really crazy part of Axe’s run was the fact that he defeated Trif and was in a position to make top eight from the winners side despite a fairly tough bracket. On the surface, Axe’s results since Full House seem to suggest a dip, but there are potential signs of now being a great time to buy high on Axe.
It’s tough to say if that’s the case for moky, who was knocked out of the tournament at 13th place. This marks the fourth consecutive time the summer No. 5 has underperformed expectations at a major. That’s not to say that moky’s entire year has been bad – clearly he had a strong enough first half to remain a Top 5 player – but I think even he would admit that he’s in the middle of a slump right now. For whatever it’s worth though, this isn’t necessarily new for moky in the summer. Last year, moky had a terrible Supernova 2024 and broadly disappointing summer – all right before winning his first major months later.
One last thing to mention here for Top 32: one of the most interesting results was fitzy, a likely contender for Top 100, defeating Faith. Faith did not meet eligibility requirements for summer rank, but is well recognized as a monstrous opponent for Fox players and last year’s No. 45 player. Adding her name to fitzy’s list of defeated top Marth players this year (Kalvar and Epoodle) increasingly points to the possibility of these “upsets” really not being upsets. Keep an eye out for fitzy as the year continues.
Notable Events in R2
Let’s begin with the regional scene nearest and dearest to my heart: New England Melee. This community’s seemingly endless cadre of mid-level players made quite the splash this weekend. What first comes to mind is Boston Luigi main Greenstach’s amazing run to 49th place, in which he upset Rishi and Daniel. The person who knocked Greenstach out of the tournament, mind you, is the ex-top dog of Massachusetts himself in Younger (who is now in New Jersey). He had a quiet run to 33rd in which he also beat Fable and survived being taken to game five from eventual 65th placer Seal, an Indiana Sheik and dear friend who himself had a notable upset in beating SpacePigeon. Another wild result from Massachusetts at this tournament came in the form of Worcester Fox player Coolslice defeating Top 100 Marth player Jude for 97th place. Ember, the New England No. 3 and longtime “next up” top player of New Hampshire, had a neat run to 33rd also, though it admittedly came with two heartbreaking game five losses in the Sheik ditto to Spark (a Cubstraption Sheik ditto) and Zanya, as well as DQ luck with Wizzrobe’s absence.
On the topic of Sheik players benefiting from DQ luck, Foxy Grandpa (who dodged MOF) reverse 3-0’ing Junebug was not necessarily a surprise given the character matchup and players involved. And yet it ended up being quite consequential, essentially knocking one of Zain’s hardest opponents out of his way. I previously mentioned Zamu’s victory over Krudo, and in that same area of the bracket, 404Cray defeated Salt, displacing a third projected winners Top 32 player. A fourth player who missed that same cut of bracket was Aura, who was sent to the losers bracket by Panda.
Elsewhere in round two, we had fascinating tossup matches and surprises alike. DarkGenex defeated Zanya. Swedish Delight – someone whom I chose as my surprise overperformer of Collision due to the fact that he basically does this all the time – ended up falling to max and beating both Philadelphia Fox representatives (Kevbot and Young Neil) in the losers bracket. OG Kid beat each of Grab and Fudge before taking Junebug to game five in a very bizarre series of lopsided games for each player. Fable overcame a former regional demon in Mot$ and eliminated Rishi – all after getting upset by Younger. HOBORG scored a Top 100 win over Lowercase hero, but lost to Billz immediately afterward. Porkers had a neat run where he beat each of Just Jason and TheAsianOne. Dawson ended up falling out of the event at 49th place, losing to bambi and Boyd.
Alright. I think that’s everything. If I missed anything, it probably wasn’t that cool. Or maybe it was, and I’m either being a hater or lazy.
Misc. from R1
Before Collision, I wrote that I believed Squid would still make round two pools playing only Yoshi (Squosh). He ended up doing that, but not without being the loser of the event’s first notable upset first, as he lost to Connecticut Captain Falcon Lati. He ended up 3-0’ing YokaiNels after that to make it out, though he lost immediately afterward.
Sticking in the register of notable New England results, Future Shock, a Captain Falcon from Southern Massachusetts, had a big upset over 12YOWeaboo, the Fizzwiggle-slaying three seed Sheik main of his pool. Not to be outdone, Arn255, a rising Connecticut Marth main, then upset Daniel. It’s honestly kind of wild how Arn255 is getting all these impressive out-of-region results this year. While I’m not convinced they would qualify him for the ballot right now, he seems like a pretty good “2026 Breakout Player” pick with how well he’s performed against peers and players with slightly better results than him, which also includes a set over Mot$ at a monthly.
The last thing I’ll say here is that I had no idea who Kowler was. Seemingly unseeded, this multi-main from Northeast Pennsylvania (I think?) ended up upsetting each of MintyFlesh and ight. I looked him up in the Melee Stats server for mentions before Collision and found only a few modest results. I don’t know anything else about him, but his quiet showing at Collision did ruin the days of a couple of regionally notable players, and that’s all you need to get a mention here.
BOWSER MAKES TOP 8*
You thought I wasn’t going to recap doubles? No chance – not when this format has brought Bowser to a major top eight. It is absolutely insane. I was familiar with the Fox/Marth player Dragunov beforehand – he isn’t regionally active in singles, but he’s performed as solidly as you can without being power ranked in Connecticut. However, I was certainly not familiar with Drunk’s game (the Bowser). When I looked his singles results up, all I could find from this decade was a 2-2 at Tipped Off 15 – from 2024, mind you, not the most recent one – and a noteworthy 4-2 at Genesis X2 where he barely lost to Justus. According to DarkGenex, he’s from New Jersey, which makes sense given this state’s history of having randomly good obscure players.
From what I can tell, Dragunov/Drunk are basically doubles specialists. In addition to playing doubles unranked a bunch together, they frequent doubles matchmaking servers despite having no notable results together at big events. This makes their breakout run all the more unbelievable. They ended up defeating each of 22K/Kalvar, Zamu/Spark, Artan/TheAsianOne, and Wally/Fable, only losing to the top two seeds of doubles for fifth place as the 58 seed out of 70 players. In other words, this team basically went from a potential 0-2 to being the main story of doubles.
I would not consider myself an expert on doubles. However, I know a thing or two about doubles results. Why I choose to track them for a competitive format I constantly deride is difficult to articulate other than the fact that it fills some type of personal void – but the more important point is that Dragunov/Drunk have an achievement of sheer scale that I haven’t accounted for in my methodology of tracking notable doubles results. Over the next week,I’m going to expand my focus in doubles from top four placements to top eight placements in order to see if there has ever been a team with a Bowser – let alone one with players who are as relatively unknown on the national stage as these two – that’s outperformed expectations like this. I’m pretty sure the answer is “no,” but stay tuned.
Other Doubles Storylines
Now that I’ve addressed the fire-breathing turtle in the room, we can move onto other doubles storylines from this tournament. The first of which comes at the top: Hungrybox/moky have won a second doubles major together. I don’t quite know what to make of this on the grand scale, if such a thing exists in doubles. Surely, they are not suddenly the best doubles team in the world when it appears like Cody Schwab/Jmook got bored. But maybe they are by default? I don’t know. I thought this would be a one-time content thing for each of the players involved, but they basically won another major together. They may as well stay committed.
Speaking of which, this event is another underperformance by Krudo/Panda, whom I’m pretty sure are not going to receive favorable treatment by doubles seeders any more. To be fair, their dropoff might say a bit more about each of the players involved prioritizing singles, as Krudo’s since entered the Top 10 and Panda ended up doing well at Collision. But as far as their status at the very top goes, it’s been a far cry since they both eliminated Cody/Jmook from Supernova 2024, which feels like ages ago. By results, I am not convinced that this is an inarguable top five doubles team any more.
Other teams are worthy of note here too (shocker). We’ll start with the MD/VA duo of Kevin Maples/eve, who once again finished in fourth place at a major. This time was even more impressive, as they beat Krudo/Panda and Swedish Delight/Trif, my sleeper pick to win doubles. Zuppy/Mot$ ended up eliminating Kevin Maples/eve, as well as beating Krudo/Panda yet again, finishing in third place. I haven’t even mentioned Joshman/Aura, by the way, who ended up beating Hungrybox/moky in winners finals and fell just short of winning the tournament. They both entered this event as a fourth seed, and ended up outperforming expectations yet again. If you had to make a doubles top five, this team probably deserves to be there, and in the higher tier of duos on that list. Granted – this is tough to definitively say because each of Cody/Jmook and Axe/aMSa don’t seem like they are around for the rest of the year, and Hungrybox/moky just became a thing together. God. You know what? Nothing means anything unless we make it mean something. Let’s call Joshman/Aura a Top 5 team right now. If I had to guess, they’re definitively under each of those three teams and above everyone else.
I previously mentioned Swedish/Trif as victims of an upset to Kevin Maples/eve, but that wasn’t the only team that achieved this feat – the other team that beat them was Rocks/Bigbuffalo in a totally unexpected result. It’s not like Swedish/Trif immediately flamed out though; they ended up finishing in seventh place while eliminating the ex-Eggdog duo (Zamu/Spark) and the Brotherhood (Aklo/Foxy Grandpa) from the tournament. It both doesn’t make sense to me, yet in hindsight seems on brand with maybe what I should have expected. Meanwhile, my sleeper team to look out for (Kalvar/22K) ended up making top eight through a neat losers run where they beat a bunch of regionally strong duos. They admittedly benefited from bracket luck (due to Swedish/Trif being sent to losers bracket on the other side early), but it would be cool to see the New England duo travel together on a more regular basis.
Giant DQs
If you thought Supernova was bad, you’ll have another thing coming with Giant Melee at Collision 2025. Out of the 58 Giant Melee attendees, there were 33 DQs in the losers bracket. MOF, who was literally in another state, finished in 13th place before getting DQ’d herself because of the number of DQs. At the risk of sounding like a huge buzzkill, this event should be gutted if this is to be expected. Personally, it’s neither charming nor endearing when it wastes a bunch of the tournament’s time (though I can’t be too mad, as it opened up quite a few friendlies, which the event boasted).
Respectfully toward the tournament organizers – whom I think did a great job all weekend – we can surely find a better use of time for Friday before doubles. The Heroes vs. Villains theme for Collision 2024 didn’t really make any sense, but that was more exciting than this. Hot take: it’s not beast to have more than half the entrants DQ. On a more positive note though, the bracket’s dark horse of sorts in Swedish won, with this also being his first time entering a Giant Melee bracket. Just behind him was last year’s runner-up DarkGenex, who finished in a similar spot this year. Another surprise was Nicki, the Collision 2024 champion, finishing in fourth place, losing to Swedish and Miffee. Other than that, the coolest thing about Giant Melee was HOBORG finishing in fifth place.
That’s all I got, folks.