Team Liquid Hungrybox's Tumultuous 2025 Season

2025 has been a roller coaster for Juan "Hungrybox" Debiedma. After finishing no better than fifth in the past five SSBMRanks, including Summer rankings, many had written off Hungrybox as a contender for #1 in the world. But at the kickoff event of the 2025 Melee season and one of the biggest events of the year, Genesis X2, Hungrybox announced to the world that he was back in a big way, winning his first major Melee tournament since Riptide in September 2022.

And then, just four months after returning to the peak of Melee for the first time in years, Hungrybox had arguably the worst tournament of his entire career, his worst placement in over a decade. It came at Tipped Off, the same tournament series where Hungrybox's record breaking streak of Top 8 finishes, which dated back to 2015, was snapped the year prior. Hungrybox finished 33rd, taking a huge upset to rising Virginia Fox player Maelstrom and a truly unfortunate draw into another one of the tournament's high seeds, top Ice Climbers player Nicki.

Hungrybox called the two losses a “smudge in my career" in an interview with Team Liquid. But rather than dwelling on that one bad result, Hungrybox instead went out and won his next tournament, CEO 2025 in his backyard in Orlando, Florida after a tense Grand Finals win over one of his bracket demons, Captain Falcon main Wizzrobe.

"I feel like the CEO win right afterwards is really, really cool," Hungrybox said. "It wasn't technically speaking what the Melee community would consider to be a major event, but when I look back at it and realize, there were 13K viewers, that Grands was an insane one with a lot of people talking about it and eyes on it. I don't know, it seemed like a very important victory for me."

That win alone wasn't enough to salvage the season. But less than a month later, Hungrybox would get another chance at a major tournament at Get on my Level: Forever, Canada's biggest Melee event of the year. In some ways, the tournament would end up being a microcosm of his 2025 — full of high highs and low lows. Early on, it looked like Hungrybox was doomed for a repeat of Tipped Off. He lost in Winners Side Top 16 to SDJ — a fellow Puff main, a previously unthinkable loss for Hbox, given that he hadn’t lost a Puff ditto in about 15 years. (His last loss was in 2010, against Mang0 prior to MAng0’s own switch to Falco and Fox.)

The similarities compounded, as Hungrybox would have to fight Moky, one of the best Fox mains in the world, in the lower bracket. At Tipped Off, Hungrybox couldn't gather himself in time to fight a world-class opponent, but at GOML, he had a different mentality. "One thing I'm really proud of is what I did when I lost: I sat right back down and just started warming up. I didn't sulk. I just got right back to work and I didn't even look at my bracket ahead. I was just told who I had to play and it was Moky next. I just told myself, well, if I can beat Moky then I can do this run."

Hungrybox had a 13-7 lead lifetime against Moky heading into the match, but the Canadian Fox was on home turf and had Hungrybox's number of late, winning 4 of their last 5 matchups. Hungrybox was able to clutch up, though, and silence the crowd in 5 games. His run wasn't going to get any easier from there: to make it to Grand Finals, he had to defeat Yoshi maestro aMSa , then Top 10-ranked Fox main Joshman, then his bracket demon Wizzrobe, and finally, win the runback against SDJ's Jigglypuff. All-in-all, Hungrybox would have to take down five Top-20 players, three in the top 10, just for the chance to face the number one, Zain, in Grands. 

"If you give me that bracket at any other point this year, I probably falter," Hungrybox said. "But the good part was that every time I would play, I just got a little more warmed up, a little more confident. Taking down the people that had beaten me before raised my confidence. To have made it all the way to Grands, that alone, I was just very proud of myself."

With more momentum than ever, on likely the best run he had all year (arguably stronger than his winning run at Genesis X2) Hungrybox lined up to fight not just his demon, but a demon for Puff players everywhere. OTo become Melee’s consensus-best player, Zain also became the best ever Marth in the Jigglypuff matchup, and by a wide margin. Hyungrybox had moments of brilliance, spots where sharp edgeguards and rests wrestled the lead away from Zain. But Zain always found a way back and ultimately won.

The Marth player is well positioned for a repeat at the top spot. 2023's #1-ranked player, Cody Schwab, isn't far behind him either. But Hungrybox still feels like he has a chance to make a run to #1 this year, even though he knows he's going to have to have an insane finish to make up for that 33rd place at Tipped Off. 

" I think if I would've gotten like ninth at GOML, then I think the dream would've been pretty much dead," Hungrybox said. "But the funny part about double elimination brackets is that if I had just gotten second place from winners, it would've been strictly worse for me than if I had gotten second place from losers. Now I have an extra set win on Moky, on Joshman, on aMSa, Wizzy, even with SDJ."

"Things just transpired into me having a lot of great winning records. So as a result, I'm now a hundred percent third for the summer at least so far. So it's a pretty good report card and I think the #1 rank dream is definitely not dead. Winning Supernova will be pretty important and if I don't win Supernova, then I have to win like everything else this year and just really lock it in. "

Still, Hungrybox knows that’s no easy task. Competition at the top level is much tighter than when he was dominating the scene in the late 2010s. "The level of dominance that I was at back then, obviously it's a pipe dream to try to get back to it. I really want to, you know, I hope that one day it does happen. But the field is much, much harder now. It's not just the top guys who are harder."

Hungrybox is also not solely devoted to the push for #1. He's a full-time streamer, with his stream time focused more on Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. He's a part-owner of Team Liquid as well. Melee is not the only thing demanding his time. He's also 32 years old, and despite the fact that we've seen plenty of high-level fighting game players succeeding in their late 30s and 40s in recent years, it's easy to question how long Hungrybox can keep up in a game so focused on speed and dexterity. How many more chances does he realistically have to push for #1?

"I have faith in myself as long as I'm keeping up and proving that I can still play at this level and I'm still improving, " Hungrybox said. "I was playing last night, and I'm just realizing that my habits, my movement, my option selection and stuff, it has been really, really good."

"I'm still an old dog learning new tricks," Hungrybox said. "I don't think this is the last chance at all. The next five years, I think they're all legitimate chances for me to really, really do it. And I say five years not because I think when I'm 37 I'm gonna be terrible at Melee or something. I'll definitely be a little slower, but who knows? By the time I'm 37, how do I know I'm not gonna have a kid or something? In the next five years, there's a very high chance of real life becoming very real."

Hungrybox's up-and-down 2025 season continues with Supernova, starting Friday August 8th through Sunday August 10th in Virginia. Supernova has been kind to him in the past, dating back to its time as Super Smash Con. He has finished no worse than 4th at the event since it began in 2016. He's finished second four separate times. This year, Hungrybox needs a win. It'll be a challenge, but his Genesis run proves Hungrybox is still capable of winning majors in 2025. 

Can he clutch up again to keep the #1 dream alive? Part of the fun of watching him play is that, despite the challenge, it always feels possible.