abstract
| - Before this match ever began, the big debate was not this match of Bowser's, but Bowser's second match. He was a lock to face Ryu of Street Fighter fame, and those who argued that the Spring 2005 stats were invalid or that they inflated Bowser kept noting that Ryu placed a couple of percents above Bowser in the 2004 Xsts. The problem with this is that said stats are simply Bowser being given his 2003 value due to being stuck behind Mario/Bowser SFF, and the entire Bowser/Ryu debate centered around whether or not his match with Sephiroth in Spring 2005 was legitimate. After all, it saw Bowser perform better on Sephiroth than Mario had managed against Seph. Of course, people naturally assumed that this was a fluke just to defend their Ryu > Bowser picks and completely dismissed the notion that Mario would likely perform better than Bowser against Sephiroth if Mario and Sephy ever had a rematch. And trust me, I'll be using a certain match in the Tournament of Champions to laugh at these people later, because really, you'd be hard-pressed to find a dumber argument than OMG BUT MARIO DID WORSE THAN BOWSER TWO YEARS AGO RYU WILL STILL WIN to defend a Ryu > Bowser pick. But I digress. In a nutshell, the percentage to watch for in this match was 33.92%. This is what Spring 2005 M. Bison is projected to score on Spring 2005 Bowser, and since it's pretty widely believed that the Street Fighter ladder is Ryu > Ken > Chun-Li > Bison = Akuma in terms of popularity, one could easily assume that if Chun-Li were to go well over 33.92% that Bowser was in trouble next round. And if Chun-Li happened to clear 35.05% (Ken's projected score on Bowser based off of 2003), the warning signs would have gone off all over the place. Unfortunately, the match decided to not tell us anything useful; Chun-Li.... pretty much did what everyone expected her to do, which is fall in between what Ken and Bison would be expected to score in her place. Bowser flirted with holding Chun-Li under 30% for a little while at the beginning of the match, but after the percentages leveled off, the match stayed extremely consistent. Bowser was at just under a doubling within 45 minutes, and at the end of the match, he was.... just under a doubling =p Consistent matches leave us with little to discuss, though if you felt like pulling at strings you could argue that if Bowser's Spring 2005 performance was legit, then Chun-Li performing "as expected" makes her look stronger than Ken. Which doesn't make sense, and makes it look like Ryu still had a good chance at beating Bowser in the next round. Or something. Of course, it would take nothing more than one more day and the very match after this one to end all of these arguments, because Ryu decided to be nice enough to perform like absolute crap.
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