For the first time in over two years, Hungrybox is back at the top of the Super Smash Bros. Melee mountain after surviving three straight rounds against iBDW and Jmook to win it all at Get On My Level 2022.
For Hbox, who was the first player to ever be ranked the top Melee player in the world for three consecutive years, from 2017 to 2019, he had a slight dip in offline results once tournaments started coming back in late 2021.
And, while that dip only extended to finishing in the top six rather than dominating every Melee event, it was still a drop compared to his previous dominant play.
However, over the last several events, Hbox started climbing the ladder and challenging top performers to competitive sets and asserting himself again—despite some recent controversy surrounding ledge-grab limits and stalling.
His crowning moment at GOML came in the fourth round of the winner’s bracket where he finally defeated one of his biggest bracket demons, ending an 0–10 losing streak to iBDW with a 3–2 win. Though iBDW did kind of get the last laugh with a reverse pop-off after losing.
On the other side of the bracket, Jmook overcame Zain in 3–2 reverse sweep that saw him zero-to-deathing the Marth player off of a cc dash grab while at 170 percent damage. And he had to reverse sweep him again in loser’s finals after losing to Hbox, joining just a handful of players to ever beat Zain that way.
In the runback against Hbox in grand finals, history repeated itself with the Jigglypuff legend completing a second straight 3–1 win after dropping the first game in each set—improving his overall record against Jmook to 6–0 all time.
This was Hbox’s first Major win since Smash Summit 9 in Feb. 2020 and his third GOML title overall, joining GOML 2015 and 2018 on his resume. The other stand-out was Joshua “Joshman” Lyras, coming in from Australia to take fourth for his highest Major finish ever.
