Justin “Plup” McGrath entered Smash Summit 9 after the weakest stretch of Melee he had in a long time. Even at a weak stretch, Plup still had results most Melee players could only dream of.

Plup got 7th at Mang0’s Birthday Bash, 9th at Big House 9, and 25th at Genesis 7. Along the way he lost to a few competitors he would normally beat, like ARMY, Swedish Delight, Fiction, SFAT, and Moky. To understand Plup’s ability in Melee, his lows still exceed most of the Top 100’s highs.

Plup wasn’t alone either. He was a part of a larger shakeup in Melee caused by breaks, retirements, extended downtime, and explorations into Ultimate. At the end of 2018, Nintendo released Ultimate, probably the closest the (official) Smash series has gotten to Melee. Now that the meta has settled, it’s pretty clear Ultimate is a far cry from Melee but it was close enough to intrigue a lot of Melee’s top players.

Those players ended up split between Melee and Ultimate and in the world of Melee it’s very hard to take on a second game. Dominique “Sonicfox” McLean can be a top competitor in multiple fighting games because these games share multiple mechanics and base fundamentals. Melee is unique, even amongst the Smash titles and the platform fighters.

Melee demands practicing unique skills and unique timings. It demands enough that players like William “Leffen” Hjelte have had to drop playing games like Dragon Ball FighterZ and Ultimate in order to keep up with Melee. Like Leffen, Plup also picked up Ultimate and still competes in the game seriously. For a time, Plup took a break from Melee and focused more on Ultimate – though it always felt clear all of that was temporary.

At the same time, Adam “Armada” Lindgren retired and Jason “Mew2King” Zimmerman took a long break and still isn’t focusing as much on Melee as he used to. Zain “Zain” Naghmi also took a break for his hands and Justin “Wizzrobe” Hallett had a spotty and downright bizarre attendance record where he bounced between doing very well at 3 Smash titles at once and hardly playing a tournament a month.

For a while, Melee looked really weird.

Players who put sole focus on the game were starting to get an edge on those that didn’t. Players who Armada consistently kept down started to make upsets now that he wasn’t there to eliminate them. Juan “Hungrybox” Debiedma stayed on top of most of the competition but every few months a different player would upset him and win. At one point, Plup played Puff into Hungrybox.

There was a fun sense of spectacle to the strange way things played out but there was something unfulfilling about Melee’s wonkiness. Throughout 2019 it felt like at any given moment a few of Melee’s very best weren’t totally invested, like they weren’t in their prime.

Melee’s favorite speed demon

For Plup and a few other top players, they weren’t in their prime. They were taking breaks, splitting time between games, and DQing from bracket. Very few people, fans, analysts, or players blamed them for it either.

These players have long histories in a game that doesn’t have an offseason. Plup’s own Melee career began a full decade ago. Practicing, travelling, streaming, and creating content for that long without a break can break a player physically and mentally. Hax$, Plup, and Zain have all ran into hand issues to varying degrees and taken breaks to deal with the physical stress. Asking players to constantly perform at peak with no breaks wouldn’t just be entitled, it would be irresponsible.

So most voices in Melee respected the breaks, retirements, and new goals the pros had. At the same time, how could you not miss peak Melee? Every player brings something at their peaks that no other player can. Leffen brings an insane momentum that would either destroy the bracket or implode. Mang0 brings dynamic, heavy reads based play that let him style on any opponent. Plup brought raw speed and tech skill.

Plup is Melee’s speed demon and has been even when he mained one of the slowest characters still relevant in the meta – Samus. Since switching to Sheik and Fox, Plup unleashed his full talent and bloomed into a consistent top 10 caliber player. When playing at his prime, Plup isn’t just one of Melee’s best players, he’s one of the most fun to watch.

Plup plays two of the fastest characters in Melee (Fox has the second fastest initial dash and run speed Sheik has the 4th fastest) to a very high degree of mechanical skill. At his prime, Plup rarely misses a number of techniques that improve those characters’ speeds even further. He rarely misses core techniques like wavedashes, turnaround tilts, boost grabs, ledge dashes, and so on.

However, he really shines when it comes to platform movement. Plup becomes very fast, ambiguous, and hard to punish on platforms through a mix of wavedashing, quick slide offs, drop downs, and nearly impeccable shield drops. Shield dropping, a quick, precise joystick movement that lets you drop through a platform and perform an instant aerial out of shield, is one of the quickest ways to attack off of a platform.

Plup rarely ever misses these and it makes his Sheik terrifying on the platform. If opponents approach with a hitbox, Plup can shield the hit, shield drop, and retaliate with a super fast aerial. If opponents approach with a grab, Plup or an empty jump Plup can hit that as well. A shield drop aerial isn’t unbeatable, but given Sheik’s sold hitboxes and fast aerials, it’s a great – though mechanically difficult – option.

When Plup plays really well, he combines his movement skill with quick reactions to create insane openings off of small interactions. Sheik, the character Plup will play into most matchups, really suits his style because she has a great mix of fast, low knockback moves with big hitboxes and raw speed. The combination of speed and openers lets Plup create unique combos and strings like this one below on Axe.

It’s also why, when Plup was slumping I couldn’t help but miss seeing him in his fully wired in, prime competitor mode. That electrifying style is part of why, during Plup’s set against Hax$ at Summit 9, commentator Lovage said, “I love seeing Plup’s sheik again man, I can’t tell you how much this is making me happy.”

Puff, Ultimate, and Plup’s break

In February 2019, Plup took a break from Melee after placing 3rd at Genesis 6, losing 3-2 to Hungrybox and Axe. 3rd at one of Melee’s biggest tournaments was a huge achievement but it had been a recurring one for Plup. Melee’s fastest player was routinely getting stalled out before 1st place by a character that felt like the antithesis to Plup’s style at that point – Puff.

According to Liquipedia, the head-to-head between Plup and Hungrybox from February 2018 to February 2019 was 10-3 in Hungrybox’s favor. Hungrybox had eliminated Plup from 6 different tournaments in that timespan. Plup was tired of fighting Puff, but the record only partially explained why.

Plup had a certified bracket demon in form of Hbox but also a character that seemed to mute his style. Plup’s normal fast, high-intensity, platform focused play didn’t really work on Puff, who was usually too floaty too combo and too strong in the air to fear Plup’s platform movement. At the same time Melee became tiresome, Ultimate became a big avenue for Plup.

The early days of Ultimate were perfectly suited for Plup’s goofy, lighthearted, and just slightly salty charisma. Plup began streaming Ultimate several days a week and was one of the most popular Ultimate streamers online. He was naturally good at the game, exciting to watch, and ran with the game’s early flaws rather than chafing against them.

Where other players were raging at the online and how anyone in quickplay could force you to play their awful, item based ruleset, Plup was forcing other people to play on his awful, item based rulesets. Plup’s quickplay streams were a mix of hilarious, trolly fun and actually good matches in the unsettled early meta of the game. He was also grinding the game seriously, practicing against top competitors.

Between the new game, the time off, and his loss of morale in face of Puff, Plup was bound to slump a little. “A little” are key words here. On his return, he started placing 5th, 7th, and 9th more often than anything but this was a fall from before when he rarely placed below 4th. Plup dropped from 4th to 8th on the Melee rankings.



Though small, the drop meant a lot for the top of Melee, as players Plup normally beat – like Axe and Zain – began taking sets off of him. To make matters worse, it looked like the trend might continue downward when Plup placed 25th at Genesis 7.

The return of prime Plup

At Genesis 7, Plup had his worst placing since 2015, finishing 25th. It’s as much a testament to Plup’s consistent skill as it is his 2019 slump. His next tournament would be Smash Summit 9, one of the smallest but hardest events in Melee. Nearly all of Melee’s top 10 would be in attendance along with audience vote-ins who tended to be top 100 as well.

There was a chance it would be Plup’s worst Summit yet, but there was also a chance the opposite would happen. Smash Summit is such a coveted event because it lasts for four days and concentrates some of the best in the esport ino one area for that time. It becomes an incredible media and training opportunity, where up and coming players can relentlessly grind their skill and develop followings.

Exposed to four days of concentrated Melee, Plup could return to prime form. He could even exceed it. He had a pretty strong avenue for growth too, his first round of Swiss Pools being a bye, giving him more time to practice and prepare.

In Plup’s first match against Hax$, we saw the first signs of prime Plup’s return.

Aziz “Hax$ Al-Yami became one of the rising stars of 2019 just as the year came to a close. He came into Summit with multiple wins on top players (including Hungrybox), a 4th place finish at Genesis 7, and a unique style of Fox fit to his unique controller. Plup wouldn’t win the match but it almost didn’t matter.

Plup looked nearly as rejuvinated as Hax$ and took the Fox main and Boxx inventor all the way to game 5. Along the way, Plup scored a sick double needle edgeguard to close out game 2 [7:10], a 60% grab punish into a dynasty [13:00], and a grab on a falling Fox that didn’t even look possible [10:25].

Plup also had enough flubs in the set that simple mechanical miscues might have cost him the set. He gets stuck on the platform trying to fall through and edgeguard with needles [5:40], he missed a wavedash leading to his death (though it could’ve been a bad air dodge)[8:00], and he misinput two throw directions [18:10] – a big deal for Sheik, who can huge damage and kills off her down throw.

The Hax$ set showed a Plup returning to form but not quite there yet. In the coming Poos matches, Plup would really turn on and beat Shroomed and Magi 3-1, then Mang0 3-0. His bracket would give him an even better chance to shine, with him facing Axe and Zain, two players he had great records against before his slump.

Shine he would. Plup’s set versus Axe also went down to the wire, being a game of insanely hard punishes where one Sheik grab could build massive percent on Pikachu but one jump read could lose Sheik a stock. Here, Plup was nearly immaculate in his play. He had what looked like one missed shield drop in game 1 [3:30] but otherwise hit all his movement tech. He consistently managed to SDI out of Pikachu’s down smash, hit his combos and confirms, and started showcasing his insanely fast reactions. At about 19:40, Plup perfectly spaces the second hit of his up tilt then immediately closes in for a grab that nets 42%.

Plup seals the win, 3-2 and moves onto Zain, the player who just won Genesis 7. Plup 3-0s Zain. Zain simply can’t deal with Plup’s mix of mobility and impeccable reaction punishes. For example, when Zain forward Smashes Plup’s shield, Plup turns around, wave dashes and grabs in one clean sequence that’s just about a second long [2:00-2:01].

About 40 seconds later into the match, Plup wavedashes off a platform, away from a recently revived and invincible Marth, then wavedashes in and grabs just as Zain whiffs a neutral air and loses invulnerability [2:42]. Even with Zain counterpicking FD twice and taking away the platforms, Plup’s insane reactions add a level of risk to scenarios that Zain can’t prepare for. Zain loses a stock by hitting Plup with his up special while recovering. Plup immediately techs the hit, dash dances over, and boost grabs Zain while Marth is still in landing lag, leading to an up air kill [5:30].

In his match against Zain, Plup shows the relentless speed and ability to react that made him a consistent top 4 finisher in 2018. Plup would also go on to convincingly beat Mang0 but the largest win he was in Grand Finals, against Hungrybox’s Puff, a bracket demon who had only become stronger after Plup’s rest. In 2019, Plup was 0-6 in sets against Hungrybox. He’d only taken five games off the Puff the entire year.

Armada noted before the the beginning of the match that this wasn’t just a Puff issue for Plup – it was a Hungrybox issue.

“He needs to not get frustrated,” Armada said of Plup. “That’s like one of Plup’s weaknesses – that he gets too mad when stuff doesn’t go his way and Hungrybox, he strives [thrives] off that. He can like smell when you’re getting desperate, when you’re getting mad…”

After losing to Hungrybox in Winners Finals and returning in Grand Finals, Plup looked beyond on. Not 10 seconds after the word “GO” left the screen, Plup hit Hungrybox with a downtilt, slid to the very edge of the platform, grabbed Puff out of the air, and got an up throw-up air kill confirm. In Melee, speed and reactions open a world of new options to pick from and at his peak Plup seems to pick all the right ones. He ended game 1 with 2 stocks after putting on a show.

In the first set against Hungrybox, Plup didn’t just bring speed, reaction, and skill, he also brought a clever gameplan. He used Fox’s mobility to enter into Puff’s space and put out jabs and up tilts. The jabs could chain to up smash or back air while the up tilts would kill at higher percents and both were fast enough to be unpunishable. To access these options, Plup needs that speed few other players have, as he has to be able to perfectly wavedash, then turn around to get the jab or up tilt to face the right way, then if needed, land a follow up. Each step of that process requires very precise inputs inside very tight timing windows.

Plup took the first set 3-1. But on the other side, Hungrybox was also playing at 100% capacity. Hungrybox did not drop a game in pools, 3-0ing Hax$, Mang0, aMSa, Fiction, and Plup. Hungrybox dropped only 2 games before he met Plup in bracket – one to Mang0 and n0ne each. Hungrybox was also playing out of his mind and ultimately, Hungrybox won. In set 2, Hungrybox was the one to take the first stock in the first ten seconds and to win 3-1.

However, Plup had returned to the form that won him Genesis 5 in 2018. He played a faster game than anyone in the bracket and he beat Hungrybox in a best of 5 for the first time since CEO 2018 – a full year and a half ago. Despite not winning the event, Summit 9 felt like a return of 2018 Plup and Plup felt like the competitor to watch. He was the one leveling up each day all the way up to the point that it felt like only one other player in the world could challenge him.

P.S. If you see somewhere where I mistook one tech for another or missed something, just let me know in the comments. In the speed of Melee, it’s easy to miss the little details.