Before this contest began, Tidus was considered to be the overwhelming favorite by the board to win this match. To give you an idea of this, Slowflake’s Board Odds Project had 127 brackets picking Tidus to win, as compared with only 24 brackets with Kirby. However, their first round matches put this “foregone conclusion” into doubt. Kirby tripled Final Fantasy IV hero Cecil. In spite of the completely unrecognizable picture Cecil got, this was very impressive. Tidus followed that up with a mediocre performance against the King of All Cosmos, netting only around 72% in that match. People began to acknowledge that Kirby definitely had a fighting chance of winning this match, but that still did not prepare us for what would happen.