Let's not rewrite the past, plenty of people believed the rallies could be stopped. For Draven, everyone expected MMX and Ryu would defeat Draven before the match. And if people had no hope, Link would never have done that well , and Draven wouldn't have needed a sticky to finish off Snake.
And in the 2015 contest, it was the same, people expected Fallout to defeat Undertale; After Fallout lost, according to a poll back then, 74% thought it could be beaten (and at that point, Melee hadn't rallied yet). At one point during the Pokemon match, everyone called Undertale dead. And of course, people called Undertale dead when Melee took the lead for 3 updates. (that was a ridiculous overreaction though). For the OOT final however, hope was truly dead.
Averia you are right about this.
It's 20-20 hindsight now, we all believe now that it was obvious Undertale was going to win after round 1/2. But at the time, it was very uncertain ---