Immediately after a heartbreaking loss at Tipped Off 16 grand finals, Zain declared that the summer would be his to win. He proceeded to back his words with action, winning each of GOML: Forever, Supernova 2025, and Collision 2025 in a row. With Riptide 2025 coming up next weekend, one question is on all our minds as Melee viewers: can anyone stop Zain?
I typically use this column to explore everything you should look out for across a major weekend. But in today’s column, I’m going to do something a little different. While I’ll be breaking down what to look for in doubles, along with other brief storylines in singles, I’m also going to talk about Zain, who can beat him and what other historic streaks in Melee history can tell us about this latest run of dominance.
Can anyone beat Cody Schwab/Jmook in doubles?
Doubles happens to have another dominant winner in Cody Schwab/Jmook. In case you forgot, this team has quite literally won everything they have attended together since being eliminated from Supernova 2024 in fifth place. Counting only majors, these two have since won five majors in a row, starting with last year’s Riptide. And remember: this doesn’t count Altitude Sickness 2 or Platfight 2024: two events that could certainly be considered “nationals.”
On the surface, this is a historic feat: to win five majors in a row without dropping a set. But we should also remember that Hungrybox/Plup once achieved this feat before presumably not entering anything together for another year and a half. Several months out of shape, the two went for the six-peat of sorts at Riptide 2024, where the current reigning champions (Cody/Jmook) and a then-arguably Top 10 team in Free Palestine/Polish sent them home in third place. I mention this because Cody/Jmook have not teamed together since Nouns Bowl 2025. Granted, unlike Hungrybox/Plup, it wasn’t over a year since their last event, but at the same time, April does seem like a long time ago.
Assuming Cody/Jmook don’t DQ – which is not a guarantee – the team here that comes to mind as a potential spoiler is Zuppy/Artan. This double Fox team came close to winning Nouns Bowl, beating each of Krudo/Panda, i4/Fecfec and the Zain/moky super-team in a run to second place. But if it’s not these two Fox players, another super-team of sorts in Joshman/Axe could be a killer to look out for. Interestingly, I believe this is their first time teaming together. Now, Axe/aMSa has essentially been the second best team to Cody/Jmook when around, but let’s be real: if Axe can succeed with a top Yoshi, there’s basically no reason he can’t succeed on a similar scale with a Top 5 player who plays a better character. I am not saying that Joshman/Axe are instantly a better team than one of the greatest duos of all-time – I am only saying that this team is quite strong.
The teams after these three are less stacked, yet still offer a glimmer of hope for a world where Cody/Jmook do not trounce everyone while half asleep. There’s Spark/Preeminent, whom I believe are actually teaming together after Spark and a Level 9 Luigi together finished in 25th place at Supernova in place of Preeminent. I could see another Fox/Sheik team in salami/Free Palestine making a deep run given salami’s prior success teaming with a similarly strong doubles player in Darkatma. Wizzrobe/Gahtzu make for a very hit-or-miss double Captain Falcon duo; right beneath them as the seven seed comes the Ontario duo of n0ne/Faust, whom I haven’t seen before. And lastly comes the most peculiar of the top eight seeds: RapMonster/Sparkinmed, who got fifth at GOML, notably knocking Soonsay/Preeminent out of the tournament.
Beneath the top eight seeds, we have a real who’s who of doubles teams: the central Florida duo of King Momo/Captain G. The Nouns duo of Aklo/Maher obviously stand out too. But then you have Smash Papi/Chango, as well as Fragging&Laggin/IMDRR. I will not act like I know jack shit about this group, but I did notice another name underneath them that I believe could do some damage in coffee/Lord English. The same goes for Boyd/Drephen, one of the longest running Midwest duos, and one that could break out here on the right day. Closing out our top sixteen doubles seeds are two other interesting squads: Majersk/TheAsianOne and the two best Wisconsin Fox players in Lowercase hero/DannyPhantom. The only team beneath the top sixteen seeds that I have any vague interest or familiarity with is Morsecode762/M1sf1re. For a mix of novelty (a Samus/Luigi team) and the skill of the players involved (with Morsecode’s strong results despite national inactivity and M1sf1re quietly building a case for the Top 100 ballot), this one is hard to top.
I’m going to say that Joshman/Axe win this tournament. My guess is that either Cody/Jmook don’t show up (read: DQ), or Joshman/Axe beat them in winners finals before Zuppy/Artan eliminate them from the tournament. If I had to pick a team to overperform or break out here, I’ll go with Drephen/Boyd. They’ve made a few major top eights together, but they’ve never made a top four; what better place to do it than in the Midwest itself?
Four potential Midwest breakouts
One of the most fun parts of each Riptide is seeing how hidden players from the Midwest break out. At the first Riptide, Flash had a run to ninth place that put him on the national map, as well as earned himself a Melee Stats sponsorship a couple years later. At Riptide 2022, Ginger had a big run to fifth where he beat moky and Magi. In the following year, Ben had a career high fifth-place performance, defeating Flash, Zuppy, and Bbatts, and at Riptide 2024, coffee scored a huge upset over Quang, who then had a monstrous losers bracket run to ninth place, where he beat Goodie, Drephen, Faust, Fudge, and bonfire10. This section will overview four “sleeper” Midwest players whom I believe have interesting storylines and potential breakouts heading into this year’s Riptide.
I’ll begin with Just, a player whose results I’ve become more familiar with especially in 2025. Just is a very strong Sheik player with a penchant for success in the Sheik ditto and against mid-tiers, broadly speaking. In May, he finished No. 1 in Northeast Ohio, a spot right above Blesse, which is very impressive. Recently, Just’s been traveling a ton for Melee as well, nabbing out-of-region wins over Holiday, Freezus, and Ampp. The Just major breakout has been in the works for a long-time; it hasn’t happened yet because he’s in the seeding range of players where he usually draws some ridiculous top seed early before typically placing to his seed. It’s really any day now.
The second player I’d like to mention is M1sf1re. As I wrote about before, this Ohio Luigi player has slowly been building a case for the Top 100 this year thanks to one matchup in particular, boasting wins over DarkGenex and SluG. I think that he’s probably already on the safer side of players that could make the ballot this year, but a really big breakout performance here (or another win over an Ice Climbers player) would probably seal the deal on what’s already been a great year for him. Also, in fairness, he has wins in the year over Holiday, Blue, Free Palestine, and Balloon Day, so he should escape the ICs merchant allegations.
We then get into Ober. Over the last few years, the reigning Chicago No. 1 has basically been about as good as anyone can be without making the Top 100. This year, she seems very likely to finally make the list. Last weekend, she beat Pleeba and Slowking at Cream City Convergence, and she sent Zamu to the losers bracket at Out of the Blue 4.
Let’s conclude with a fun wild card in Joey Donuts. A longtime Minnesota giant, as well as a nemesis to be feared in online play, Joey had a great Supernova 2025 where he beat Inngenn and eve on the way to 25th place. For a long time, he’s been a player that’s had a lot of potential and been hyped up by those who know about him, but he’s never consistently had the opportunity to travel or showcase it on the big stage. Now that he’s actually done it, he’s in a great position to follow up on it for this year’s Riptide.
Midwest storylines of Top 16
In this section, I will briefly overview what I think are the most interesting Midwest storylines within Top 16, excluding anything to do with Zain. If I don’t mention something here, it’s likely because I’ve written about it before in another column and don’t feel like mentioning it again, or I don’t find it that interesting.
I’ll start with something I think is pretty cool: MOF’s recent long-term stays within the Midwest. I’m not entirely 100 percent on the details, but she has been traveling Wisconsin and Chicago a lot, as well as attending a ton of tournaments there. Take, for instance, last weekend’s Cream City Convergence (which she won). To my knowledge, this could be her first Midwest major as an accidental Midwest representative; I think she could honestly have entered enough to be power ranked in Wisconsin.
Staying in the register of notable Midwest players, this tournament gives another opportunity for Ben to build off his incredible run to ninth place at Supernova. In case you forgot, he casually became the Avatar in the Sheik ditto across the whole weekend, defeating each of Krudo and Jmook. Ben’s had a history of performing well at Riptide, as I wrote about before, so he has an outside shot of returning to top eight with the right bracket.
Speaking of players with incredible Supernova performances, we can’t ignore Ginger’s return to competition. He initially kicked it off with a quietly impressive GOML before then absolutely tearing the house down at Supernova, where he beat Axe, Jmook, Aklo, and several others in a huge run to fourth place. Brackets can change, so I won’t get into his projected matchups too much, but within the Top 16 field, I think he’s favored against anyone seeded outside the top eight, and I could frankly see him defeating many top eight seeds too. Only Zain and Hungrybox feel like completely hard “stops” for him. In a field without many top Falco players, Ginger could play a big role.
The last Midwest representative to note here is Morsecode762. While he didn’t make the cut for activity for the summer Top 50, everybody knows he’s very strong and he recently had a decent run at Supernova where he only lost to Krudo and Jmook. Before that was an excellent run to ninth place at GOML, where he beat Nicki and Soonsay. Morsecode is interesting; he wasn’t really active in the first half of the year, but after Riptide, assuming he doesn’t DQ, he’ll have four big events between Full Bloom, GOML, Supernova, and Riptide, as well as plenty of notable weekend events. My guess is that he’ll end up on the year-long ballot and end-of-year Top 30, especially if he does well here.
Where Zain’s three-peat lands in recent memory
When was the last time we had someone win three majors in a row? It turns out, it was just this year. It’s easy to forget that before his fifth place at GOML, Cody had won Nouns Bowl, Full House, and Tipped Off. This is why he was No. 1 for the summer Top 50. He wasn’t necessarily invincible in this time span, as each of Zain and Joshman took sets, but it was very convincing.
Before Cody, the last person to win three majors in a row was…Zain himself. It began around this time last year, starting with his victory at Riptide 2024, followed up with taking home the gold at Wavelength 2024, and then becoming a three-peat when he won Luminosity Makes Moves Miami 2024. In this time period, the only player to beat Zain was Aklo in the winners bracket set at LMMM before Zain won in grand finals. After this event, Zain ended up losing to Aklo again at Don’t Park on the Grass 2024 before being eliminated by Nicki at fifth place.
Now what’s crazier is how before that three-peat, the last person to do it was Cody (Shine 2023, The Big House 11, Genesis X), and this immediately followed up another three-peat from Zain (Fete 3, GOML 2023, Super Smash Con 2023). Granted, each of them dropped sets in this time period (Zain to Jmook and Cody to Morsecode and Zain), but there’s a clear pattern. At any given point in the last two years, Zain or Cody have taken turns three-peating. In hindsight, Don’t Park on the Grass, Nounsvitational, and Genesis X2 (along with Jmook’s early 2023) were part of a fever dream where neither of our top two were winning events.
With that in mind, Zain’s recent stretch does feel significantly different. Instead of winning three ‘majors’ in a row – all of them have been supermajors. Unlike the other three-peats, Zain also hasn’t dropped a set. In that sense, neither of the recent Zain/Cody stretches feel quite the same (save for maybe the Cody one when accounting for The Match). To look at the closest thing we’ve had to this in offline Melee, we’ll have to go back to the late 2010s.
The last time Hungrybox truly ruled the world was when he won The Big House 8, GT-X 2018, and Smash Summit 7 in a row without dropping a set. It didn’t end there either – Hungrybox ended up winning a fourth straight major in Genesis 6, and then a fifth straight major at Pound 2019, though he lost a set to Mang0 that weekend. The streak ended up finishing at GOML 2019, where Leffen and Wizzrobe knocked him out at fifth place. That’s not quite three supermajors in a row, but four majors where he didn’t drop a set, two of them being supermajors, and five overall. And frankly, Summit probably should count as a supermajor-level event, so I’d treat it as Zain’s current run on steroids.
How has Zain been so dominant?
Breaking news: Zain is really good at Melee. This is not necessarily groundbreaking news, but Zain seems fairly dedicated to competing as his first and foremost way of engaging with the community. Although he’s spent most of this year expanding his content horizons with the grand-master challenge, as well as the Suck Tuah Marathon, Zain basically does nothing else but play Melee as his job. Obviously, the biggest reason he’s so dominant is because of himself.
But without taking credit away from Zain, I think he would admit that he’s benefited from a good number of external circumstances. For example, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Zain’s run of dominance has come during a time span in which aMSa has both been less present and has performed lower than his previous major contending standards. That’s not to say he can’t defeat aMSa – he literally won their last set – but there’s magnitudes of perceivable differences between how Zain performs at events where he has to play aMSa and events where he doesn’t.
In somewhat similar fashion, I believe that Zain benefits from the absence of Leffen, another player that could have conceivably defeated him and has outright won majors over him. But because Leffen is practically retired, I’m going to go out on a limb and state another European player whose brackets have not ended up with Zain matchups: Nicki. The last set these two played was a dominant 3-0 beatdown. I don’t think that would necessarily happen again, but this is a third player that has an argument to be Zain’s toughest matchup, and the two have straight up not played this year.
Ironically, one of the factors you could guess that worked against Zain’s favor this year was Mang0’s ban, as Mang0 was one of Zain’s most favorable top-level draws. However, I believe this has actually helped Zain. From a pure bracket standpoint, Mang0’s absence has been a net good for Fox players: a group that Zain and Mang0 both historically dominate. To his credit, moky has finally shown that he can defeat Zain in tournament, and I do not think players like Joshman or Soonsay are going to be farmed forever. But there’s still a difference between someone being able to beat Zain versus being expected to defeat him. From a pure results standpoint, Zain makes mincemeat of any top Fox that isn’t Cody.
Who’s left that could be considered a conceivably difficult opponent? Obviously, there’s Cody, the second seed of the tournament and someone who ended Zain’s top eight streak at Nouns Bowl. Axe won their last set at Full House, though he struggled for quite some time before that. Jmook outright won their last set. MOF has taken him to game five before. Joshman and Aklo have each shown moments of promise – with Aklo obviously defeating him twice with the Link in 2024 – but I’m skeptical of it happening at Riptide. It’s been years since Wizzrobe’s looked like a formidable opponent for Zain, and every set they have involves Wizzrobe missing 99 edgeguards. With respect to them as otherwise formidable opponents, I’m not counting on anyone else at this tournament to beat Zain. Maybe Morsecode or RapMonster could surprise him because of how rare it is to play a top Samus or Luigi in tournament, but I doubt it.
Will Zain four-peat?
Looking at the projected Riptide bracket, for whatever it’s worth, I think that Zain has a very good chance of four-peating. For starters, we can safely assume that he will probably make it to his Top 16 qualifier match against one of Spark or Zuppy. Either of them would be his first Top 50 opponent of the event. In fairness, Junebug did defeat Zain in a similar round at Nouns Bowl, but the only time before that in which Zain was sent to losers bracket so early at a major was when Wally did it at Super Smash Con 2022, and even Junebug himself felt like an extraordinary opponent for Zain to play in that spot versus another peer. Just based on results, I’m not counting on him losing so early here, regardless of opponent.
In the projected winners quarterfinals, Zain will play Wizzrobe. If it’s not Wizzrobe, it would be one of Ginger, KJH, or Skerzo. Needless to say, 2025 Actual Melee is very different from 2021 Online Melee, and nowadays, Zain trounces Wizzrobe. Meanwhile, the other opponents are spacies who aren’t Cody. Respectfully to them, Zain is a different beast. He is going to rock any member of this group unless they bring their A game.
Zain’s possible winners semifinals opponent is where it gets interesting. Although he’s heavily favored against Joshman (10 set win-streak), Zain did just lose another huge win-streak against a top Fox in moky – it’s clearly possible for a Fox other than Cody to beat him. Furthermore, it might not even be Joshman in the path. I don’t think it’s the likeliest outcome, but if Jmook can make it by SDJ and rediscover some magic against a personal demon of sorts in Joshman, suddenly, we have one of Zain’s toughest opponents in top eight on his side of the bracket. With that said though, I am doubtful of Jmook’s ability to replicate this result in 2025, a year when we’ve seen Ossify posterize Jmook in the same matchup. Meanwhile, if it’s SDJ here instead of either of Joshman or moky, I would find it very difficult to believe they could catch Zain off guard. They recently played at GOML, where Zain won in a convincing 3-1.
This brings us to winners finals. It’s here where Zain will finally meet his match of the tournament in Cody Schwab: the player closest to him in major wins for the year, and his biggest rival of this generation. I’ve detailed before in this column how historic their rivalry is in the grand scheme of Melee, and it’s only gotten more legendary since. It is possible that he plays someone else here, be it Axe, Aklo, or Hungrybox, but for narrative purposes, I’m going to assume it’s Cody, because everyone on his path seems like an extremely favorable opponent.
I’m not sure what will happen from there. But my heart tells me that Cody Schwab ends Zain’s major winning streak in the most fitting manner possible: a double elimination without dropping a set. If this happens, these two will be tied for the year in the head-to-head count at 5-5, as well as tied in major wins at four apiece. Wait a minute. This sounds familiar, doesn’t it?