"That was the peak of my entire career," says Juan "Hungrybox" DeBiedma. "For sure."
He's talking about Smash Summit 5, the fifth installment of Beyond the Summit's prestigious Super Smash Bros. Melee invitational. It was there, just over a year ago, that Hungrybox clinched Melee's year-end No. 1 ranking for the first time, defeating Adam "Armada" Lindgren in a game-five last-stock grand final.
As this weekend's Smash Summit 7 nears, the Jigglypuff main appears poised for another victory -- and though he maintained his No. 1 position through the midyear Melee Panda Global Rankings, his path to Summit 7 has had its fair share of ups and downs.
After Summit 5, the longtime Team Liquid member embarked on the winningest streak of his career, steamrolling through national tournament after national tournament deep into the spring of 2018. The lone blemish on his resume was a second-place finish at January's Genesis 5.
At all of these events, Hungrybox's only losses came at the hands of players using Fox, a character once considered a soft counter to Jigglypuff. Noting his bulletproof record against the rest of Melee's roster, Hungrybox and his coach Luis "Crunch" Rosias dedicated much of their training regimen towards the development of tools and strategies for the Fox matchup.
In early May, this feeling of invincibility led Hungrybox to a disappointing performance at Smash Summit 6. After losing to Joseph "Mang0" Marquez's Falco and Masaya "aMSa" Chikamoto's Yoshi in the invitational's pools stage, the Floridian was forced to begin his bracket run on loser's side. In the end, Hungrybox finished fourth, his lowest placing in almost a year.
As 2018's Summer of Smash picked up speed, Hungrybox's relative slump continued. At June's Smash 'N' Splash 4, he lost to Armada's Fox in the grand finals; a week later, he was outmaneuvered by Justin "Wizzrobe" Hallett's patient Captain Falcon play at OpTic Arena; and at CEO 2018, he dropped a set to Justin "Plup" McGrath's Sheik.
"It's a sign that [I] needed to develop a new strategy for those characters," says Hungrybox.
After a fourth-place finish at Evolution Championship Series 2018 marked by one-sided losses to Armada and hated rival William "Leffen" Hjelte, Hungrybox had enough. He felt crushed by the expectations heaped upon him as the world's best Melee player, and frustrated by what he perceived as unfair hatred directed at him by the Smash community. On Aug. 12, after members of the community publicly criticized him for checking his watch during the top-8 of Super Smash Con 2018, Hungrybox lashed out.
"F--- this community man," tweeted Hungrybox. "All you guys ever do is look for ways to give me shit over any tiny thing. All 12 years of me playing Melee has been full of it."
With that, he signed off, maintaining radio silence for over two weeks.
As it turned out, a break from social media was exactly what Hungrybox needed to get back on track.
"I would recommend it to literally everyone," he says. "I came back with a much healthier mentality, won Dreamhack Montreal, won Canada Cup -- oh yeah, won Big House. ... It looks like the streak is starting to come back."
Buoyed by this fresh mentality, Hungrybox is playing better than ever. With winning records over all active elite-level players, a plethora of major victories, and a super-major title at The Big House 8 -- where he was seeded second after Leffen -- he's a stride ahead in the race for year-end No. 1. But, as was the case at Summit 5, Hungrybox still needs a good run at the last super-major of the year in order to secure the top ranking. If he suffers another significant upset this weekend, the coveted No. 1 position could very well fall into the hands of Armada, or even Leffen, the Evo champion.
Asked about his own shot at the MPGR top spot, Hungrybox is quick to point out Armada's impressive year, citing his lopsided 1-5 record against the Swede in 2018. "After Smash Con, I was ready to accept that Armada got the rank one back, almost certainly."
When the subject of Armada's mid-September retirement comes up, Hungrybox is mournful.
"He retired, and in some ways most of us say, 'Oh wow, Armada retired, Hungrybox must be really excited about that,'" he says. And to some extent, that's true. "With him gone, I definitely do feel that I have a much bigger advantage."
But Armada was arguably the only man in Melee whose discipline rivaled Hungrybox's, and the Floridian wonders whether anyone else can inspire him to continue to improve and push the metagame the way the Swedish Sniper did.
"I developed some really huge new strategies against Fox with Crunch," he sighs, "and I never got to use them with him."
In spite of his resurgence at The Big House 8, Hungrybox remains far more vulnerable than he appeared at the beginning of 2018. At Shine 2018, he was double-eliminated by Zain "Zain" Naghmi, Panda Global's upstart Marth main, who nearly collected a third win over Hungrybox earlier this month at GameTyrant Expo 2018. And at late October's Canada Cup, Hungrybox dropped a grand finals set to Samus main James "Duck" Ma. Still, he doesn't see this loss as a harbinger of future Samus problems. "[Duck] was always able to take games... I knew it was only a matter of time."
Melee's kings -- its "gods" -- have come and gone over the course of the fighting game's 17-year lifespan. But Hungrybox, on the cusp of his second consecutive season as Melee's top dog, has shown that he's here to stay. And though he's grown accustomed to the taste of victory, he still has the competitive drive it takes to surmount the year-end rankings.
All he needs is a strong performance at Smash Summit 7.
"Even now, when I win tournaments, it's not like it gives me the same euphoria it used to. But when I lose events," says Hungrybox, "it gets me angry."