Is this guy who played Smash for a year the most dominant eSports player in history?

Smash 4 doesn't have enough of a drive behind it imo. I have more respect for the Melee players given how technical it is.
You can be the best of something, but it isn't that impressive until there's enough people playing the shit out of it that being the best means something.

I've watched Zero play, he's good, but it's whatever to me.




TeamLiquid Final Edit: The Ultimate Weapon
$500,000 in prize earnings, much much more than that in salaries and sponsorships. Nicknamed God. Flash on a plane

Small Korean children who dreamt of becoming progamers with 14hour a day training over weeks to prepare a single cheese build on a map to beat him were struck down by Flash. Anyone with an understanding of BroodWar who watched Flash's games in his prime had an incredible treat. No one dominated like Flash did, especially in his TvT streak of 14-0(?). He simply did not lose, and if he did it was a 50+ minute tactical positioning war of attrition against another S tier player.

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This was eSports 10 years ago
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Bonus: Savior in his prime (TL: God of the Battlefield)

I neglect to mention Savior for obvious reasons.
 
Koreans are powerhouses in esports. Any scene they take it seriously, they dominate.

LoL world championship might as well be renamed as Koreans vs Rest ( that needs some koreans in their team too. )
 
The OP players' smash success is frankly unimpressive because there's not nearly as much competition. Sure he's very good, but he's definitely not proven he's the best. And playing Smash, he never will.
A pretty ridiculous statement when the Smash Melee tournament scene has lasted longer and continues to have larger attendance than almost every other fighting game with a decent following.
 
Not even right now, he is the most dominant at Smash, but at large in the whole FGC/Esports scene, not really.

I'm not a huge Fighting game fan but if his record is truly 55-0, that is a pretty good argument for most dominant right now (past year or so).

Personally, I think Faker is most dominant right now given the huge popularity of LoL in the eSports scene.
 
People saying Ken was more dominant than ZeRo is? That's talking down ZeRo senselessly. Ken was losing tournaments, and major tournaments were far smaller back then. Big locals and medium sized regionals are bigger these days.
 
People saying Ken was more dominant than ZeRo is? That's talking down ZeRo senselessly. Ken was losing tournaments, and major tournaments were far smaller back then. Big locals and medium sized regionals are bigger these days.

I mean Smash has 100+ weeklies nowadays. And 200+ biweeklies and monthlies in some places.

I agree with you.
 
I neglect to mention Savior for obvious reasons.

Yeah he had all his Kespa titles stripped.

In terms of Brood Wars players with major titles, Flash has 8, Jaedong has 7, Bisu, iloveoov, and Nada have 6, Boxer has 5.

Faker and Bengi, for League of Legends, currently have 5. If they win this Worlds, it would make 6.
 
I only really follow fighting games so i would have to say Jwong .
Still i am sure there people people that did better in bigger games .
Truth is when your game has a huge amount of people or a international aspect it does help prove your the best .
 
The level of competition he's facing is not even close to the level of competition other champs have faced.

It's like trying to compare Ronda Rousey to Mike Tyson.
 
One. He isn't even esports.
Two. He isn't even the most dominate fighting game player ever.
Three. He isn't even the most dominate Smash player ever.
Four. He isn't even the most dominate player in recent times.
 
Ty for including Savior Hazaro, I may still be really mad at him for the matchfixing shit but dammit he was so good back in the day.
 
I'm not a huge Fighting game fan but if his record is truly 55-0, that is a pretty good argument for most dominant right now (past year or so).
That 55 "tournament" number is hella sketchy because it's including locals/weeklies in that number too.

Like if we start including Justin's weekly/local tournament numbers from his MVC2 days he could have over a 100 wins easy without a loss. Of course there's no record of that because no one really tracks weekly/local wins in the FGC.

Justin as far as we know didn't lose for 4 years in MVC2 Tournaments and the streak was finally broken by Sanford Kelly.

Before that Justin lost in some 5v5 exhibition against Soomighty which many people have seen many times because it was ridiculous at the time but of course Justin quickly beat down Soomighty after that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQNz8KH8SlI&app=desktop

This match is also when I first heard the term "sandbag" being used in gaming. People thought Justin was sandbagging in this particular match.
 
Are eSports participants called players or athletes? I forget.

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Gonzolo Barrios aka ZeRo aka Scarf Lord has been a notable competitive Smash player for a few years now. However, he didn't truly reach his apex (pun intended) until Smash 4 came out. Since then, he has won 55 Smash 4 tournaments. In a row. Out of 55 tournaments. CHECK IT IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE ME.

Notable victories:
Smash 4 Invitational aka the first time people got to see the game being played by other people in public
APEX 2015 champion
PAX 2015 champion
EVO 2015 champion, where he also defeated Nintendo World Champion John Numbers (this makes ZeRo the Nintendo World Champion right?)
Falcon Punched mew2king three times in five minutes

Is there anyone else in eSports that comes close to his dominance? Is one person completely dominating all pro competitions good or bad for the game? Can he be stopped? He is truly the Michael Jordan of video games. Or maybe Michael Jordan is the ZeRo of basketball.

Who?


Again, who?

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Well atleast this Faker dude is on the charts.
 
f0rest, fatal1ty, FLASH, Faker, those are the ones I can remember anyways.

ogre1 and ogre2 from Halo:CE and Halo 2 shat on everyone. IIRC they have never lost a competitive 2v2 in CE and only lost 1 or 2 tournaments during the Halo 2 days.
Who?



Again, who?

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Well atleast this Faker dude is on the charts.
lol if u wanna rate esports players by earnings then ur gonna be pretty sad.
 
Again, who?

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Well atleast this Faker dude is on the charts.

Uuuh that chart isn't indicative of much when TI's prize pool skew the results.

Faker is, no doubt, the most popular eSports player right now.

If you're really talking about money, Chinese teams offered Faker over a million dollar salary to join them. With that, he would be #1 on the chart.

Faker turn them down.
 
He meant small as in competition size, I'm pretty sure ZeRo faces more opponents than in these other games.



How? He's never been as dominate as 2012 Infiltration of Current Momochi in SF4, and other games it's probably worse. Bas went out as the best A3 player and Daigo was never dominate in ST.

I'm about to educate you man. Bas was the best A3 player? Why? Because Daigo moved on from Alpha 3? Daigo won the national tournament in A3. He got 2nd to Bas team in 1999 national tournament. He won the 2000? national singles tournament the following year. When he was active he was the best. Bas solely became the best in that when Daigo quit.

Daigo won the VS national tournament. He quit the game shortly after moving on to Alpha 3. He won that national tournament and played it for another 2-3 years. He went onto CvS and won that national tournament. Then he moved to CvS2 where he got beat by Shiro allowing Nuki to win that national tournament breaking up his streak of official national tournaments for games that just came out.

Then when Tougeki first came into existence (after that amazing resume I just listed) the dude ended up qualifying for 4 tournaments. He got 1st in ST, 2nd in CvS2, and 3rd in Guilty Gear. Getting top 3 for 3 games at a single SBO was never done again btw. At EVO he got 2nd in CvS2 and 3S, and got 1st in ST and Guilty.

He quit fighting games in 2004, but came back for the fuck of it only to compete in 2005 SBO where he got 1st in 3S and 2nd in Capcom Fighting Jam.
 
Three. He isn't even the most dominate Smash player ever.

I don't know that this is true, who has been more dominant in any Smash game? The closest is probably Isai in 64 but nobody cares about 64 and Isai doesn't even try and throws games and tournaments away.
 
In Starcraft II:
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Mvp_(player)
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Life

There are couple more who also stayed in championship contender form for 1-2 years, Zero still has a lot longer to go to reach that height. Not even mentioning Brood War titans like Flash, Jaedong, Bisu.

If Life was able to complete that run he was in at the beginning of the year, I would easily put that in contention for greatest run ever. That would have been Blizzcon, IEM Taipei and Katowice, GSL and SSL within 5 months of each other, with the last 3 within 2 weeks of each other. Besides that, he's been kind of all over the place. He went to Blizzcon in 2014 because he was in almost every foreign tournament and finishing well in them. He's struggled the rest of this year since that run to the point of not being brought out in his team's final Proleague match.
 
I don't know. ZeRo is the only name - and face - I've ever heard. I think the exposure he gets now is bigger than people like Justin Wong got in their biggest years, even if they did comparably bigger(?) things.

You say this, but there's literally not an even casual level fighting game fan in the world that doesn't know Justin Wong. dude is a top tier player at everything he fucking touches. It's not some obscure thing only old dudes know, just a cursory glance at any major tournament for basically anything but Smash and you'll see him.
 
I looked at the list for ZeRo wins. Fire and Dice, Super Smash Sundays, UGC tournaments are all locals. Yes, they are all Social weeklies which means the talent is better than average usually, but not everyone in the region travels to the same touenament and the stakes or prizes are just the local pot.

Its like bragging about winning spring training games.
 
As a person who doesn't play Smash or know anything about it as a competitive game the absolute disrespect for it in This thread is simply stupid. So many shit posts.
 
You say this, but there's literally not an even casual level fighting game fan in the world that doesn't know Justin Wong. dude is a top tier player at everything he fucking touches. It's not some obscure thing only old dudes know, just a cursory glance at any major tournament for basically anything but Smash and you'll see him.
honestly i only know jwong from when daigo whooped his ass in third strike.
 
smash 4 hasnt been out for long enough to call him the best ever

just a week ago we saw him in super close sets at big house, people are catching up hard. guarantee he wont stay on top (or at least this dominant) much longer
 
I looked at the list for ZeRo wins. Fire and Dice, Super Smash Sundays, UGC tournaments are all locals. Yes, they are all Social weeklies which means the talent is better than average usually, but not everyone in the region travels to the same touenament and the stakes or prizes are just the local pot.

Its like bragging about winning spring training games.

Yep no one really care about weeklies in other FGs.
So if you counting that you going to be missing a lot of data for other people .
 
Speaking of Japan, Kuroda in 3S probably has something similar to Justin Wong MvC2 streak. Too bad there is no stats about his wins.
 
Uuuh that chart isn't indicative of much when TI's prize pool skew the results.

Faker is, no doubt, the most popular eSports player right now.

If you're really talking about money, Chinese teams offered Faker over a million dollar salary to join them. With that, he would be #1 on the chart.

Faker turn them down.
It's just tournament winnings, salaries aren't taken into account. Not Faker's fault Rito doesn't dump their billion/yr into prizepool.
One of the Chinese supports in Dota supposedly had a $500,000 transfer fee. And rightfully so. Brood War salaries and sponsorships are pretty guarded, but you can be sure any of the top S players had $200,000+/yr in deals at least.
 
Speaking of Japan, Kuroda in 3S probably has something similar to Justin Wong MvC2 streak. Too bad there is no stats about his wins.

It's hard to keep track of fighting games in general. For example, Daigo and Nuki were the two best VS players when they actually did play, but they quit the game to move onto other games. That's when Sako started to become famous for his play. Like how Nuki said in his video "Why are these Sako fans giving us shit when we don't even play the game anymore?" There are similar stories in a lot of games and players who stick with certain games become gods in those games. Was Bas considered the goat CvS2 player for the first 3 years of the game or was he just one of the best where it was too difficult to name a best player? How about Kuroda and MOV?

What if SF4 continues to be played and some player that is not on the radar right now dominates that game for years to come? Will that player be considered more dominant in SF4 than Infiltration or Daigo?

There's a lot of variables. Was the region where you made a killing the best possible location to determine who was the best? EVO at first certainly wasn't the best way to gauge a player's ranking compared to now. SBO had that crown along with other national Japanese tournaments. Korea is the best area to determine who is the best for Tekken right? China for older KOFs?
 
One. He isn't even esports.
Two. He isn't even the most dominate fighting game player ever.
Three. He isn't even the most dominate Smash player ever.
Four. He isn't even the most dominate player in recent times.

Three is probably wrong, and four definitely is.
 
Dude is basically gawd status in smash.

Only a gawd would lose on purpose just to bring up the property value of a losers bracket and still win the entire tourney


So sincere
 
Three is probably wrong, and four definitely is.
Nah, Ken during his era was dominant. You can argue the tournaments were smaller, but that doesn't mean the quality of the matches were affected by it. And he was winning in the era of MLG prize pools and pot bonuses. In 2006 and 2007. Also, Ken got 6th in his season of Survivor. Let's see ZeRo do that.
 
Three is probably wrong, and four definitely is.

Don't take my word for it and follow tournaments for various scenes. He may be the most dominate Smash 4 player but overall in competitive gaming as a whole not even close. There are a lot of good points in this thread already.

Calling someone the most dominate anything ever for a game that's considered being in it's infancy is funny.
 
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