When Brian “Cosmos” Kalu woke up on the morning of May 26, 2019, something was different.

There was no pressure on him to put on his best performance for the crowd that Sunday. He was just a spectator.

Previously, Cosmos made the top eight of every PGR event he had entered in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. That Saturday, at the S-tier event MomoCon 2019, Cosmos was eliminated and finished in 13th.

For once, he could rest on a Sunday.

Cosmos had not been in the top eight of every Smash tournament he ever entered, he finished ninth as recently as Glitch 6 in January. Yet,that was the last time he had finished outside the top eight in months, and it was before the Smash Ultimate’s first PGR season began. The first ever Ultimate tournament to count toward the Panda Global Rankings was Genesis 6 on the first weekend of February. Cosmos finished seventh.

He didn’t finish any lower than that for nearly four months.

His PGR summary stated his run lasted for eight PGR tournaments and called his streak “unparalleled.” There couldn’t have been a better description.

At the start of the PGRU’s Spring season, Leonardo “MKLeo” Perez had also made the top eight of every PGR event he had entered, doing so in each of his first five PGR events. Then he finished 33rd at Umebura Japan Major on the first weekend of May. MKLeo hasn’t finished outside of the top four since then, but it still took until Shine 2019 in late August to hit eight tournaments in a row. He surpassed the top eight streak at Uprising 2019, which ended September 1.

Put another way, the undisputed best player in the world didn’t equal and surpass Cosmos’ streak until a few weeks ago, and he did so in between two PGR seasons. Cosmos’ streak was all confined into a single PGR season.

Image credit: Robert Paul

Cosmos continued his run of consistency even after his streak ended. Following that 13th place finish at MomoCon, Cosmos ended the Spring PGRU by finishing 13th at Smash ’N’ Splash 5, third at Crown and ninth at CEO 2019. Cosmos’ worst tournament of the entire PGR season was 13th. Only two other players could say the same: Samsora and Shuton.

Samsora, Shuton and MKLeo finished in the top five of the Spring 2019 PGRU, while Cosmos finished outside of the top 10 entirely. It’s hard to argue with a rating that comes from formulas and statistics, yet it still feels almost criminal that Cosmos was ranked as low as 11th.

Statistics weren’t alone in underrating Cosmos. It seemed as if he had quietly built his streak for the entirety of the PGR season and flew under the radar despite it, in part because of a lack of wins.

Cosmos would like to win. Unfortunately, his best finish at an A-tier or S-tier event was fourth at the very same Japan major MKLeo finished 33rd in. Yet, perhaps it was good for him that he managed to fly under the radar. With every passing event, especially after MKLeo’s top eight streak ended, the pressure mounted. Cosmos had a reputation to keep as the most consistent player in the world.

After his 13th place finish at MomoCon, he could feel a weight being lifted off his shoulders. He could play with a new energy. He could be rejuvenated.

This would have been the case if not for a mounting fatigue he was facing.

Despite taking a dream trip to Japan in April and May, Cosmos never stopped competing. During that time he played in an S-tier event and an A-tier event. He stated on Twitter that he never took a vacation or a break in eight months of competition and traveled for competitions every weekend for three consecutive months.

It should come as no surprise that in August — the eighth and final month of his streak of competition — Cosmos had the worst results of his Smash Ultimate career. He finished 65th at EVO 2019 and dropped out due to illness of Super Smash Con 2019 to finish 129th. The tournaments were on back-to-back weekends to begin August.

The only thing stranger than not seeing Cosmos in the top eight of a tournament was not seeing him in a tournament at all. Yet for the past month, competitors at North American tournaments have competed with one less obstacle between them and their own quests at top eight: Cosmos.

Cosmos will finally make his return to competition at Glitch 7 this weekend. He no longer has the pressure of keeping up an incredible streak of top-eight finishes. He is no longer burdened by the exhaustion of constant competition for more than half a year. He will be hungry and looking to do the one thing he fell short of in the PGRU’s Spring season: win a major.

It’s only a matter of time before consistent finishes turn into major wins. One of Ultimate’s other consistent players finally managed to break through for his first major win in Ultimate when Samsora defeated MKLeo to win Shine 2019.

Now it’s Comsos’ turn.