abstract
| - It's easy to look at this in retrospect with current information and go "Oh, Ryu vs three Nintendo characters all killing each other, Ryu easily wins!", and you'd be right. Unfortunately, people didn't really think that way in 2007. Everyone looked at Bowser just absolutely embarrassing Ryu in 2005 and assumed this would be a cakewalk. Just look at the Oracle predictions for this and you'll see what Board 8 was thinking. But every contest has some matches where the casuals murder the gurus, and this was one such match. Because while Board 8 was picking Bowser > Ryu without thinking twice, the public was picking Ryu > Bowser without thinking twice. As you can see, the public ended up beating the sharps, and quite handily at that. Bowser having to deal with Mewtwo, a strong Nintendo character in his own right, and then Toad thrown in for the hell of it was way too much to handle. Bowser still advanced, but Ryu got first place almost by default. Normally the public's random win over the sharps is meaningless, because we always beat them in the end anyway. But with this match, it was a bit different. It would take until next round to see why, but needless to say, Bowser wasn't exactly apt to turn this result around once all the Nintendo disappeared.
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