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Link beat Alucard comfortably but looked weaker than the writeup expected for a second straight match. The commentary identifies growing anti-Link voting as a new factor even though it was not yet threatening his championship path.

Mega Man X controlled the match, but Red still impressed enough to establish himself as a legitimate midcard entrant. The writeup treats the performance as further evidence of Pokémon's broad contest surge.

Luigi won, but Amaterasu resisted him far better than expected and continued her reputation for outperforming difficult draws. The result also made earlier Sonic Team losses to her look less embarrassing.

Weighted Companion Cube beat The Boss but looked ordinary doing so, which the writeup takes as proof that another major joke-character bandwagon was not developing. The match also illustrates how much harder 1v1s are for novelty entrants.

Sonic comfortably suppressed Knuckles and used the result to undercut the idea that single-series favorite polls translate directly into contest matchups. Knuckles's brief early lead supplied the only real drama.

SFF: The writeup says Sonic easily SFFed Knuckles despite Knuckles having won an old Sonic-series favorite poll.

The writeup gives Ganondorf's easy win over Ken only brief attention before turning into a long aside about why the author dislikes Street Fighter IV.

Kirby beat GLaDOS in a predictable match but fell far short of the strength his prior contest run implied. The writeup treats this as the point where serious Kirby-over-Sonic upset hopes collapsed.

Vivi decisively beat a heavily hyped Altair, reversing the impression created by Altair's first-round rout of Liquid Snake. The writeup views Altair and Liquid as especially unreliable contest reads after the result.

Mario and Big Boss produced yet another rematch, and the writeup uses their history mainly to illustrate how unstable four-way extrapolations can be. The match itself adds little new beyond that comparison.

Ike beat Zidane in a close matchup the writeup says was strongly shaped by the daytime schedule. It argues that a night match would likely have favored Zidane instead.

Mega Man exceeded expectations against a legitimate Zack and reinforced the impression that his series had returned to stronger form. The writeup treats the result as a major statement rather than a routine advancement.

Ryu Hayabusa overturned a matchup that the writeup had expected Master Chief to control and turned 'Master Flop' into the dominant story. The loss is framed as another example of Chief's severe anti-vote problem in 1v1 contests.

Sora beat Laharl but performed so poorly relative to expectations that the writeup declared a future Bowser win virtually certain. The result is treated as part of a contest-wide decline for Kingdom Hearts.

Bowser eventually handled Kefka, but the writeup focuses on how well Kefka held up early after years of weak or badly presented performances. It treats Kefka's broader contest run as a notable revival.

L-Block beat Isaac in an almost motionless match, but the writeup argues that the former champion had become much weaker and was surviving mainly through favorable bracket placement. A mistaken Isaac picture was corrected but is not said to have affected the vote.

Charizard turned a heavily anticipated upset attempt into a convincing breakthrough over Kratos. The result launched a serious deep-run scenario for Charizard and confirmed that his first-round strength had been meaningful.

Rally: The writeup explicitly says both Charizard and Kratos were heavily rallied, though Charizard's support proved much more effective.

Samus overwhelmed Jill early and still finished with a strong enough performance to make a potential upset of Cloud feel plausible. The writeup treats this as the start of an especially impressive Samus run.

Sub-Zero beat Roxas comfortably and became one of several low-prediction entrants to reach the third round. Roxas's late-day improvement is treated as one of the few positive Kingdom Hearts trends in the contest.

Jecht advanced as expected but looked surprisingly weak against Ratchet, who performed far better than his old contest history suggested. The writeup credits Ratchet with finally showing some real improvement.

Zelda erased the pre-match upset hype almost immediately and won comfortably. Ezio's later daytime gains were respectable but never made the contest meaningfully competitive.

Cloud rebounded from his weak first-round showing and dominated an RE5-boosted Chris far more decisively than expected. The writeup treats fanbase overlap as the most plausible explanation for Chris collapsing so badly.

SFF: The writeup says Final Fantasy VII-over-Resident Evil SFF is the likeliest explanation for Chris Redfield performing worse against Cloud than Ridley had.

Captain Falcon finally received a clean 1v1 opportunity after years of bad Nintendo-heavy draws and used it to beat Riku convincingly. The writeup treats the result as both Falcon validation and another sign of Kingdom Hearts decline.

Leon handled Sackboy without much difficulty, but the writeup thought Leon still looked slightly off compared with expectations. That muted performance ended most remaining hype for him upsetting the Ryu-Dante winner.

Most of the writeup recounts the Canada-USA Olympic hockey final, then uses the game to explain the 'Hockey Factor': Dante improved while North American voters were occupied, before Ryu recovered after the game ended.

Snake again started poorly with the board vote before recovering into a solid win. The writeup finds Fox a difficult measuring stick because so many of his prior losses involved Nintendo overlap.

Pikachu won without the dramatic daytime surge often associated with Pokémon, while Shepard continued his enormous improvement after Mass Effect 2. The writeup treats Shepard's respectable loss as one of the more impressive growth stories in the field.

Auron won about as comfortably as expected, which the writeup saw as insufficient evidence for an upset of Squall. Zero's respectable showing instead reinforced the idea that his recent weakness had been exaggerated by bad Nintendo-heavy draws.

Squall won comfortably but looked surprisingly weak against Terra despite his history of crushing lesser Final Fantasy characters. The result reopened doubts about whether Squall was safely above Auron.

Sephiroth failed to suppress Vincent nearly as hard as expected, and the writeup explicitly rejects ordinary SFF as a sufficient explanation. It instead frames the result as evidence that severe anti-voting had become a structural weakness for Sephiroth and Final Fantasy VII.

Yoshi resisted the Missingno bandwagon far better than expected and held the lead for hours, but Missingno eventually broke through during the Pokémon afternoon vote. The writeup insists the win reflected legitimate strength more than a joke rally.

Rally: The writeup says rallying aided Missingno's decisive sequence of afternoon gains against Yoshi, while also stressing that rallying was not the main reason Missingno won.

Big Daddy overcame an early Ness lead and turned a close start into a comfortable advancement. The writeup highlights the striking contrast in their match picture but does not claim the image decided the result.

Tifa ended Gordon Freeman's run in a match the writeup viewed as predictable after Gordon nearly lost to Peach. Gordon's weak showing also undercut the significance of his recent outside-contest success.