It requires little effort to recall the deities from the pantheon of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. In particular, there's just one name you should know: Team SoloMid's Gonzalo "ZeRo" Barrios. His 53 consecutive-tournament winning streak in 2014-2015 put him head, shoulders, knees, and toes above the competition -- it's hard to think of any athlete, inside esports or outside, that can command such a line on their resume. His dominance was so tremendous that at the Evolution Championship Series in 2015 there was a bounty for anyone who eliminated ZeRo from the tournament.
ZeRo took first place.
With such an uncontested reign, it's no surprise that many refer to ZeRo as the "god" of the game. In keeping with this exalted title, and despite his rocky start at Community Effort Orlando today, it's very rare to see the Chilean player knocked out of a tournament. Prior to CEO, only four players have been able to accomplish this feat; they have been dubbed the "godslayers."
The player who finally ended ZeRo's seemingly unbeatable winning streak was Team Liquid's Nairoby "Nairo" Quezada. The Zero Suit Samus main had been biting at ZeRo's heels for all of 2015, and it was at the Major League Gaming World Finals where Nairo finally triumphed. The loss did not deter ZeRo in the slightest, as he went on to take first in the next 11 tournaments he competed in.
After 2GGT: EE Saga in late February of 2016, ZeRo took a small hiatus due to a hand injury. He reappeared on the scene in May at Get on my Level in Toronto, Canada. Many were wondering if ZeRo was still up to form or if his three-month absence would have a negative impact on his performance. ZeRo tore through the tournament unchallenged until he went up against Echo Fox/MVG's Jason "Mew2King" Zimmerman. In a surprise upset, Mew2King won three games to zero, sending ZeRo to the losers bracket. ZeRo bitterly fought his way back through losers, going to game five against the likes of Ramin "Mr. R" Delshad, Leonardo "MKLeo" Lopez Perez, and eLevate's Larry "Larry Lurr" Holland. After five rounds, ZeRo met Elliot "Ally" Bastion Carroza-Oyarce in the grand finals.
ZeRo and Ally have had a long history of competing against each other, dating back to Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Ally recalled beating his rival "pretty easily" in a $50 money match. That seemed to light a fire under ZeRo; Ally started losing consistently after the ZeRo returned from Chile.
Right before that grand finals set at Get on my Level against ZeRo, Ally was definitely feeling the pressure. "ZeRo was the only one really beating me, like pretty bad," said Ally. "After you lose like five times in a row... I had never taken a game from him, so that was, you know, kind of frustrating."
Ally recounted finally taking him down, saying, "I tried to like switch in between being aggressive and defensive, and reading or just punishing period; it was really complicated, it's a lot of like 50-50s," Ally recounted. The crowd went absolutely insane.
Two weeks later, ZeRo competed again, this time in Santa Ana, California at 2GGT: Mexico Saga. ZeRo dominated his side of the bracket, and it was in the winners finals against eLevate's Larry "Larry Lurr" Holland that the series stretched to game five. But ZeRo pulled through and sent Larry Lurr to losers. There, Larry Lurr won losers finals and came back to fight ZeRo in grand finals.
To win the tournament, all ZeRo had to do was win three games out of five in the next set. If he lost, he would have another best-of-five chance to earn the trophy. This meant that ZeRo had the advantage and could afford some losses to better study Larry Lurr or tire him out. It also meant that Larry Lurr would have to play out of his mind for multiple games to stay alive.
But for Larry Lurr, beating ZeRo wasn't just about winning, it was about redemption. "There have been so many times where I've almost beaten him," said Larry Lurr, "like the last handful of sets that we've played in have gone to the last game, and he just clutches it out."
Coming close to a tournament win only to hit the ZeRo wall repeatedly is a recipe for frustration. That's when Larry Lurr had to tell himself: "Regardless of who he is, if I hit him, he's just like everyone else." Larry Lurr put high levels of pressure on ZeRo, giving him very little breathing room. But while Larry Lurr's Fox is fast and aggressive, ZeRo had more than enough match experience to keep his composure.
The first set between Larry Lurr and ZeRo went to game five, and there Larry Lurr was the one to clutch it out. The tides were finally turning in his favor, but he still had to win another set against ZeRo to win the tournament. Larry had endured four five-game sets before the grand final. "You can imagine how just, not only mentally exhausting, but mentally pressuring that is," Larry Lurr said. "Because every time I'm at the last game, it's like 'crap, I could lose right here.' A few things don't go my way, this could be it for me."
The "god" of Smash 4 was also feeling the pressure, Larry Lurr speculated. The two continued to battle it out, and the second set also went to game five. This was their 10th game in grand finals, 15th in the tournament, and they had been sizing each other up the entire time. "We both were setting layers upon layers of conditioning -- or like setups to punish each other's recoveries," Larry Lurr said. It was in these layers of conditioning that he found a small window. "In the last game of that set, I had specifically not punished his side-b's as hard as I could have -- just to make him think it's like safe to do. At the end of the game, I punished it hard and exploited him heavily."
And with that, Larry Lurr became the third person to knock ZeRo out of tournament.
The following week, ZeRo lost in grand finals to Dream Team's Jason "ANTi" Bates at Wednesday Night Fights and later that weekend to Ally once again in grand finals at Smash 'N' Splash 2. That amounted to four consecutive second place finishes, something very uncharacteristic of ZeRo.
This string of second place finishes seemed like it was taking its toll. "When I beat him at Get on my Level, you know, he was happy and all that, he was smiling," said Ally. "But when I beat him at Smash 'N' Splash... we fist-bumped, and his fist-bump was like really weak -- I could tell he didn't feel good about it." It could be that the skill gap between ZeRo and other top players was starting to narrow, or that balance patches have limited certain strategies that were once exploitable.
Either way, while ZeRo may not be making the same dominant finishes he did last year, Larry Lurr feels he should not be underestimated. "If anyone could recover from this, it's definitely him," said Larry Lurr. "He has, I want to say, one of the stronger mindsets that I've seen." And recover ZeRo did. Just this past weekend he won first at Low Tier City 4 in Plano, Texas, beating Team Liquid's Nairoby "Nairo" Quezada.
Interestingly, while ZeRo is still considered the best player in the world, he's not the best with any one character. There are better Sheik and Diddy Kong players than him. The reason behind his brilliance, and why he's so dominant, is that he understands Smash 4 at every level. He's taken the time to play and analyze each character, to understand all tool sets, and know what weaknesses to exploit. Having a strong grasp of the neutral, or on-stage gameplay, matchup knowledge, zoning, spacing, and conditioning have proven to be far more beneficial than just mastering one character. Not only that, he's incredibly level-headed and patient. Very rarely does he start to play aggressively out of frustration.
The key for his opponents are to find the pockets of frustration, to see where he starts to falter, and capitalize on it. It's these split-second decisions, these 50-50 situations, that decide who wins in top level matches. But regardless of how powerful one player is, as Larry Lurr puts it, "You play someone enough times, eventually you're gonna beat 'em."