# (3)Tifa Lockheart vs (1)Sephiroth (Losers Bracket) 2018 _source: (3)Tifa Lockheart vs (1)Sephiroth (Losers Bracket) 2018 (revid 88631)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Had Zelda never happened, this would have been our lowest prediction percentage of the entire contest. I know Tifa got annihilated by Samus twice, but that does not take away from Tifa's insane run this contest, how nuts this result is, and how epic these two sprites looked next to each other for us Final Fantasy fans. Tifa's wins, in order: Geno, Mewtwo, Mega Man X, Luigi, and Sephiroth. You won't find many contest runs better than Tifa's this year. Remember this match? It was only eight years ago. Sephiroth won 56-44, but I remember thinking at the time Tifa had a damn fine match and that Seph looked like absolute trash. Here's the proof: \[//board8.wikia.com/wiki/(1)Sephiroth_vs\_(10)Tifa_Lockheart_2010 \] It's also worth noting that back when Sephiroth was actually elite, these two had two fourpacks together in 2008. It did not go well for Tifa at all. But here, in 2018, Tifa was done fucking around and decided to just beat Sephiroth's ass for eight solid hours. Seph's early vote struggles were going to catch up to him at some point, and it happened in this match. Tifa had a 200 vote lead in half an hour, and parlayed that into a 1000 vote lead through the poll's first eight hours. Seph actually did really well for the final 16 hours of this poll, and by "well" I mean he "only" lost the last 16 hours of the poll by 200 total votes. But that didn't matter. The damage was done and Sephiroth's exit this year would go down as nothing short of embarrassing. He only looked good against Ryu, his early votes have been garbage for years, and this dude was bound to get exposed at some point. I just never imagined it would come at the hands of someone from his own game who has been weaker than him in these polls for 13 solid years (Tifa's debut was in 2005). Pikachu broke the Noble Nine. Zelda dug its grave. Tifa lowered the corpse in and buried it for good. People know what Same Fanbase Factor (SFF) is by now, but this match is probably our first confirmed case of Reverse SFF. It's been talked about a lot, usually among Nintendo characters, but seeing Tifa beat Sephiroth like this is impossible to ignore. It's also the other direct match we would have gotten had the main bracket concluded, and with this we pretty much know what would have happened. Pikachu \> Ganondorf Bowser \> Alucard Zelda \> Auron Tifa \> Sephiroth Bowser \> Pikachu Zelda \> Tifa Zelda \> Bowser That would have been so, so entertaining. Thanks, Allen :( I still think Seph might be stronger than Tifa indirectly by maybe a percentage or two, but he will never be what he once was. It would also be very, very, very difficult for me to pick him over anyone in that low Noble Nine to near-elite range. Basically, that whole group of Luigi, Mega Man X, Mega Man, Sonic, Bowser, Ganondorf, Pikachu, Kirby, Crono, Yoshi, and so on could all make a case for beating Sephiroth. It's pretty sad given he almost won the contest in 2003, and outright won a contest once. That dude has fallen really far from where he once was. You know what could save him though? And I'm not even kidding about this. Unfortunately, Square is run by a bunch of complete idiots. There is nothing and no one in media that hasn't benefited from compilations. Coachella draws more interest than any one tour from any artist playing at Coachella. Avengers speaks for itself. Smash Bros taking our site over speaks for itself. Lebron ushering in players controlling leagues instead of other way around speaks for itself. "Nah bro I'll do my own thing" just doesn't work anymore. But I'm spoiling something I want to talk about later so we move on. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was hilarious. I mean most expected that Sephiroth would win, he would struggle yeah, but win none the less. He won the last time these 2 fought anyways. In 20 minutes Tifa was ahead with more than 57%! And as per typical for Sephiroth he managed to recover. So after some hours the match stalled and they basically went until the end with around 50-50. But man. Bad day for us Sephiroth fans. So why this happened? I believe that as some said that people really don't care now for Broody guys or like Androgynous guys or something. They care for cute or hot characters. Or both actually. A good example is Pokemon. I remember when it first came out EVERYONE was saying it was for kids. And that was the case for a lot of years. But in the later years this changed. Look at Pokemon Go. Almost always adults were playing it. And the Detective Pikachu movie. Pretty sure a lot of adults will see it. So yeah. Macho men or very sensitive men don't sell now. Waifus though? This is where the money is! Now I guess that means that Sephiroth is the weakest NN'er now. Man remember when he beat FREAKING Mario with more than 61%? Those were the times! Well if in the next contest we have FF 7 remake or at least he is in KH 3 maybe he will boost a little. Because even though he has a game on PS 4 now(Dissidia NT)I don't think anyone cares for that. Also Tifa's prediction percentage was 2.35% which is on the top 10 of the lowest percentages ever. And it makes sense too. Well that was at least an exciting result. ## Tsunami's Analysis Sephiroth was the overwhelming favorite here by just about every metric imaginable. We can't see exactly how many of the overall brackets had any one particular wrong choice, but it wouldn't surprise me if he was the most popular pick there, too. Maybe. Mario was a surprisingly slight favorite to beat "Division 8 Winner", or at least, it's surprising given how Sephiroth was only about a 4:3 favorite to win Division 8. So it wouldn't surprise me if the casuals were largely on board with Sephiroth \> Mario and had Mario winning this match. At any rate, even with it clear that the top female characters were boosting, only one Oracle pulled the trigger on this upset, because it's been drummed into our heads that SFF creates a clear hierarchy and that nothing will ever produce an upset when heavily overlapped fanbases match up. ...In 1v1s, nothing will ever produce a 1v1 upset between characters from the same fanbase. Yeah, that's what we meant to say. And suddenly, Sephiroth did look like he'd lost a step, and that his relegation to the main bracket was justified. Even with all of the doom and gloom surrounding the Noble Nine after Vivi \> Mario, to the point that some people thought Snake could wind up as the only one to win his division, Sephiroth still made the final nine there. This Top 16 finish was his worst ever. And this was never in doubt. Tifa jumped out to a huge lead right away, pushing it to triple digits by the second update. One third of the way through the match, her lead stood at exactly 1000, and from there, it fell into a stall, for the final margin of 1205. This contest had completely gone off the rails, and we were now seeing the bracket-buster records set by the likes of L-Block, Draven, and Undertale being seriously threatened by characters we already *knew* to be strong. Quite simply, it was a glorious return to the days of contests being able to surprise us.