# (1)Samus Aran vs (3)Ganondorf 2005

_source: (1)Samus Aran vs (3)Ganondorf 2005 (revid 88921)_

## Results

Tuesday, September 6th, 2005

## Ulti's Analysis

- **Round:** Zebes Division Final
- **Match \#:** 50
- **Match Date:** Tuesday, September 6th, 2005
- **Vote difference:** 17,413
- **Oracle Expectations:** Samus - 62.43% 71 for - 1 against
- **GameFAQs Prediction:** Samus - 49.86% (16,849 brackets)

It was an absolute given that Samus would win this match, but the underlying story was how she would stack up to Mario's impressive performance on Zero not one day prior. Either Mario increased, Mario SFFd Zero, or Zero somehow was overrated. Regardless of which, if Samus failed to impress against Ganon in this match she was in for a world of hurt come the next round.

Unfortunately for Samus, after bracket and board votes had her over 70% for a few seconds, Ganon was quickly able to level off her percentage and get her down into the low 60s. It grew even worse for Samus as the match progressed, because not only was Ganon able to get her under 60% before the end, but the vote totals in this match were downright sad. And while one could note that vote totals are almost always low in SFF matches, Mario/Zero brought in over 107,000 votes in the very match prior to this. And if SFF matches always have low vote totals, would this not mean that there was likely very little SFF in Mario/Zero in the first place?

Even worse for Samus is that she herself was only barely able to SFF Ganon in the match. 2004 Ganon would be expected to score 41% on 2004 Samus, and all Samus really did in this match was score enough SFF to cancel out the 2-3% Zelda boost that has showed up since last year.

How anyone could compare this match to Mario/Zero and still assume that Samus had any chance of beating Mario was absolutely beyond me, but that didn't stop a whole lot of people from bringing up the stats for days on end. Yes, Samus is expected to score 56% on Mario based on stats. We know. But all the signs were there leading up to the match -- Mario looked better all contest, some stats were just outright wrong and were proven as such this year, and this match all but confirmed Mario was winning.

It was nonsense, but thankfully it was nonsense that we Mario fans would only have to deal with for one more week before the big duel happened.

## Match Trends

## External Links

- [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=2115&num=2)
- [Oracle Match Results](http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k5&type=match&match=50)

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