​Throughout 2017, Daniel "ChuDat" Rodriguez has been stringing together high placement after top placement. With his strong record over two of the Melee Gods, and dearth of bad losses, there's definitely argument to rank him above even Justin "Plup" McGrath and put him at No. 6 in the world.

​​When William "Leffen" Hjelte put together his top 10 video at the beginning of May, he credited ChuDat with great improvement, while asking whether or not the ICs main would be able to keep it up.





As for Plup, Leffen's point was that he's been the epitome of consistency, taking fifth at all the majors he's attended this year.





After a few months, though, it looks like ChuDat has a solid edge over Plup for that ranking now.

​​First off, ChuDat has shown that, on top of his 3-0 set record for the year over Joseph "Mang0" Marquez, his set against Jason "Mew2King" Zimmerman from DreamHack Austin was not a fluke, regardless of how crazy the counterpick he busted out was.





At Battle of BC 2, ChuDat ​double eliminated M2K with a 3-2 victory in winners finals and a 3-0 in grand finals to seal the deal.

​​With an 0-1 record against Leffen and 0-3 records against Juan "Hungrybox" DeBiedma and Adam "Armada" Lindgren, ChuDats performances against the other three Gods aren't nearly as glorious.





For his part, Plup is only positive against Mang0 (1-0) in sets and is even with Leffen (1-1). He's down 1-6 to Hungrybox (though locals can be blamed for this), 0-4 against M2K, and has yet to encounter Armada in bracket this year.

It's odd to praise somebody for simply taking a game, but ChuDat is the only ICs player to have taken games off of Armada's Peach. He took his first game at Heir 3, and the second one at HFLAN.





Normally, taking stray games off of Armada doesn't mean anything, but there's a fair amount of credit to be given in this case due to the matchup.





Traditionally, Peach can intelligently space FC aerials to separate the characters before just using repeated nairs to force Nana offstage. Once that's done, Popo has very little he can do to Peach.





As such, ChuDat's two games mean quite a lot more than they would if somebody like Justin "Wizzrobe" Hallett or any other non-ICs main had taken them.

"upset" chu dat 3-2 (taunted the sopo in game 5 of course) — oscar drilsson (@EGtv_Crush) May 14, 2017

​​The big statistical outlier against ChuDat is his loss to Jack "Crush" Hoyt at Royal Flush. However, Crush also eliminated Kyle "Dizzkidboogie" Athayde at the same event, so Crush is clearly well-versed in the matchup.





Regardless of Crush's competence against ICs, that is the singular outlier among all the data that weakens the argument for ChuDat over Plup.

​​As one final comparison between the two, they've each taken just a single big tournament this year. While ChuDat took BoBC2 over M2K, the tournament Plup took was Runback 2017 over Weston "Westballz" Dennis. Westballz is a great win, just not as strong as M2K.





Ranking arguments between two competitors this close are always difficult to determine, but it looks as though ChuDat has the slight edge over Plup for the No. 6 spot at this point in time.

Statistics courtesy of ​Tafostats and the ​Top 50 Head to Head Spreadsheet