World Finals Standouts: Plup, Polish & Europe
From one action-packed weekend of Melee to another, The Smash World Tour capped off offline Melee in 2021 with a bang. Forty of the best Melee players from around the world made the trip out to Orlando, Florida, all with the same goal in mind: to become Melee’s first, true world champion and earn the lion's share of the massive $150,000 prize. Catch all the highlights from Melee’s last offline major of the year below!
From one action-packed weekend of Melee to another, The Smash World Tour capped off offline Melee in 2021 with a bang. Forty of the best Melee players from around the world made the trip out to Orlando, Florida, all with the same goal in mind: to become Melee’s first, true world champion and earn the lion's share of the massive $150,000 prize. Catch all the highlights from Melee’s last offline major of the year below!
Plup Takes His First Major in Three Years
Nearly four years ago, 
rocked the Melee community to its core by winning Genesis 5, defeating top 10 staples 
, Armada 
(then ranked second on the 2018 MPGR), and 
twice to claim his first supermajor win with more than three top 10 members present. The win was huge for Plup, as he became the first Melee player in history at the time to win a Genesis title other than Mang0 or Armada.
All signs in 2018 were pointing toward Plup possibly becoming the best Melee player in the world. However, after Genesis 5, Plup wouldn’t win another major-level tournament for the rest of 2018, as well as 2019 and 2020. He was still placing highly at whatever majors he attended, with results like second at Big House 8, third at Genesis 6, and second at Smash Summit 8; he also placed second at Riptide this year. But it seemed like Plup had hit a wall of sorts in his competitive career: He was able to compete with the best Melee had to offer, but tournament win always seemed just out of his reach.
That was until Sunday, when he took home the trophy at The Smash World Tour without dropping a set. He entered the championship bracket as the second seed below Wizzrobe 
who was riding off the momentum of both winning Mainstage 2021 and placing top four at Smash Summit 12 last weekend. He also defeated , , and undoubtedly the greatest Yoshi in the world, 
.
Plup's history with Wizzrobe is about as dominant as it gets at the top level. Wizzrobe was able to take one set in their history, a 3-2 win at CEO 2019's losers quarterfinals. That broke a 10-set winning streak for Plup over the illustrious Captain Falcon, but Plup swiftly threw things back in his favor with a 3-0 at Summit 11, and it was more of the same at the World Championships, with Plup taking winners finals and grand finals both by 3-1 set counts.
Plup's last 10 sets against Wizzrobe. Click to expand.
Ending the year on an incredibly high and profitable note, there’s no telling how high Plup can climb in 2022 now with offline majors in full swing.
Europe Makes a Statement
Europe came out in full-force at The Smash World Tour with some of its best players making it into the championship bracket and taking down some extremely reputable names in the process.
, who is currently ranked third on Sweden’s Melee Power Rankings, competed just last weekend in Los Angeles, California at Smash Summit 12. There, he scored wins over players like and 
, while also taking respectable losses to Hungrybox, , and fellow countryman before placing 13th. While Pipsqueak’s performance at Smash Summit 12 could be seen as a reasonable success as he primarily lost to top 10 players, it was still far from being considered an eye-opening tournament run.
Pipsqueak took the hard lessons he learned from Smash Summit 12 and put them to good use at The Smash World Tour by placing a phenomenal seventh place. He achieved this placement by not only defeating everyone in his round robin pool (a pool that included , , and ), but also taking out . He would be eliminated from the tournament in a rematch with Polish.
Pipsqueak's run at the world championships. Click to expand.
was long considered the best active Peach main in the world after Armada’s retirement in 2018. The greatest Melee player in Spain earned his ticket to Orlando by placing second at SWT: Europe Melee Regional Finals where he only lost to Leffen.
Trif didn’t slow down at all after making his way to the championship bracket. Though he suffered a setback in the first round of winners by losing to Captain Falcon extraordinaire, Wizzrobe, he ended up placing top eight after going on a three set win streak that saw him take sets over online era standout , Faceroll, and aMSa before being taken down by Polish, ending his run at fourth place.
Trif's performance at the world championships. Click to expand.
Trif announced he would be going on a six-month hiatus following the event. Whenever he chooses to return to competitive Melee, he will be coming off of one of the best performances of his life.
Polish Cements Themselves as the Best Peach in the World
Polish has had a remarkable 2021: they placed first at The Grail, taking sets over , , and Free Palestine, first at Super Smash Con: Fall Fest while only dropping three games, and third at the NA East Melee Regional Finals where they took down top 10 members Hungrybox and iBDW both in climactic game five finishes en route to receiving their invite to the finals.
Going into the world championships, Polish’s stock was at an all time high, but they faced adversity early in the tournament after losing to Pipsqueak 3-2 in their round robin pool. They would go on to finish second in the pool and would begin the bracket phase in losers.
Polish may have suffered a slight hiccup during the first phase of the tournament, but they would prove that they were far from finished. Over the next two days of competition, Polish embarked on an insane six-set win streak which saw them take down players such as Ice, , Pipsqueak, Hungrybox and Trif, who they thoroughly dominated in the ditto 3-0. They would ultimately lose to Wizzrobe 3-0, placing third overall.
