You'd think that with how people are talking about the gods being done for and everything, that they have been winning. Leffen is clearly an anomaly - But I'm tired of hearing how close someone got. A non-top 6 player hardly ever gets represented in a grand finals when multiple gods are present. Much less actually win. Tons of results speak for themselves.
Yeah, it's super rare. This post made me wanna look through some results to check it out.
(I'm using Liquipedia's
Premier and
Major tournament listings. These are probably incomplete for some of the older years, idk.)
Instances of a non-top-6 player in grand finals:
Heir II The Throne - Aug 17 2015 - Lucky - 2nd
(special case given Armada and Leffen being weird)
Press Start - May 10 2015 - Fly Amanita - 2nd
(Mango DQ'd in first round, Leffen upset by SFAT, Hbox beaten by Lucky)
Sandstorm - Apr 19 2015 - Westballz - 2nd
(Axe>Leffen, Axe>Mango, Westballz>Hbox) Edit: also Westballz > Mango, thanks prodigy
Evo 2013 - Jul 11 2013 - Wobbles - 2nd
(Wobbles > Mango, Wobbles > PPMD, Wobbles > Hungrybox)
(This is the only tournament that the wiki lists as a 'premier tournament' to include non-top-6 in grands)
I'm pretty sure the list of premier tournaments (supermajors) since Genesis is comprehensive. So that would mean it only happened once, ever, at a supermajor.
And of the tournaments listed there.... that's it. At least since 2008's Pound 3 (which was Mango's breakout event, it had Mango then M2K as first and second). Like I said though, it's probably missing things. The amount of 'majors' in 2009-13 is conspicuously low. I know the game was dead then compared to now, but it felt like more than that happened.
What is and isn't a major here is probably being defined by the presence of the top 6, so hopefully most things with 2+ of them are listed.
Makes you realize how ridiculous the gap is. Even with PPMD not showing up to most things and 4 of the other 5 dropping sets to lower players once in a while, the upsets are rarely ever enough to bleed into top 2. Never into 1st place.
Edit:
lol
Something something great minds. Except I waited to long too post x_x