LogFAQs > #918063941

Match 110: Tifa Lockhart vs. Mega Man X

Tifa 16269
X 16155

For the second time in four matches, the registered vote was separated by single digits, in favor of the loser of the overall match. That said, this was probably the most hyped pre-Legends match, and with good reason. Both of these characters had already shown potential Noble Nine breaker power--Tifa directly, when she finished second in the main bracket X-Stats in 2006 with a near-upset of Samus (even with the Noble Nine getting beaten outright by outsiders more frequently, this is still the only time they've failed to break 50.5% in a 1v1 win against an outsider) and Mega Man X a bit more indirectly, to the point that it probably wouldn't even be brought up if he weren't Mega Man X. Namely, that X's percentage against Link in 2010 compares favorably to the original's 2004 percentage. And as of this point, he'd yet to be threatened by anything that you wouldn't immediately say "this is not a spot where Mega Man Classic would have lost". 2008, he wins his R1 fourpack outright and then finishes second to Mario twice before losing out to the combined strength of Link and Mario. Yes, he also lost to Zack Fair in that match, but given how close Zack got to Mario it's clear that Black-Haired Cloud was the beneficiary of some massive STF in that match. Come 2010, it's Link directly who took X down. 2011, if you want to count that, it was Mario/Bowser who took out X/Zero. And then in 2013, it was peak strength Draven. And even in that contest, X doesn't look horrible--because there was never any chance of either of them taking down the rallied Draven, X's battle for second place with Ryu is probably fairly organic, and X won that with 57.21%. Ryu might not be quite the dependable barometer of near-elite strength that he used to be, but he's still a strong character and that's a quality win. Also, games may not equal characters, but when we were finally given a gimmick-free Games Contest, one that wasn't intentionally balanced over the eras, Mega Man Classic got shut out while X still got his debut game in--and it did pretty damn good, almost breaking 45% in a loss to the heavily favored Final Fantasy X.

But now for the match. This one was deadlocked at 320-320 at the freeze, though X would ride a big third update to a triple-digit lead by the half-hour mark (even though Tifa had already managed her first update win by then). His lead would eventually peak at 469 at the 4:05 mark. At the 7:00 mark, Tifa won her eighth consecutive update, the first time either one had even won 5 straight since X's 7 in a row from 0:20-0:55. Tifa took her first post-freeze lead at the 9:40 mark and X promptly stalled the next one, but that zero-change update was Tifa's only update non-win for a period of just over an hour, from 9:05 to 10:10, which for this match qualified as huge momentum. She reeled off a bunch more after X's update win there, but stalled out in the 110s for a bit before recovering to eventually push it out to 194 at the 12:15 mark. Then X fought back and cut 100 off that deficit in the next 1:40. 45 minutes later, he took off 30 votes in a single update to cut it to 43, only for Tifa to take back 25 the very next update. The next time he got within 50 was met by two straight double-digit wins for Tifa, and when he got it below 20 at the 18:20 mark he was again met with a 22-vote update win for Tifa. Finally, at the 19:15 mark he took an update by 21 to take an 8-vote lead, skipping right over whatever she might have in store for being pushed down to single-digits,and kept up the momentum to a 66-vote lead 45 minutes later, then fought off Tifa's return push to expand the lead by another 23 over the next hour.
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Also known as Cyberchao X.