How Hungrybox Won Genesis and What It Means to Compete in the Biggest Smash Tournament in the World

The stage: Smash Bros. Superbowl 

“It’s the closest thing we have to a Superbowl.”

That’s how Smash Bros. Melee legend Juan “Hungrybox” Debiedma describes Genesis, one of the biggest events in competitive Smash. He’s been to every single Genesis—eleven total—but to him it always feels special. It kickstarts the year, “sets the tone for everything to come” as he says. It’s also one of the hardest events on the calendar. 

The stage: Smash Bros. Superbowl 

“It’s the closest thing we have to a Superbowl.” 

That’s how Smash Bros. Melee legend Juan “Hungrybox” Debiedma describes Genesis, one of the biggest events in competitive Smash. He’s been to every single Genesis—eleven total—but to him it always feels special. It kickstarts the year, “sets the tone for everything to come” as he says. It’s also one of the hardest events on the calendar. 

Almost everyone in the Smash scene is here, and there is only so much room on the podium. Hungrybox is one of the three best players to touch Melee and even he has only won one Genesis. Team Liquid’s Smash Bros Ultimate pros, Samuel “Dabuz” Buzby and Michael “Riddles” Kim, haven’t won any yet.   

Dabuz is a legend in Smash too but in the post-Melee titles—20th all-time in Brawl, 4th in Smash 4, top 10 in the earlier days of Ultimate. Partly because Dabuz is a veteran of the new Smash titles, Genesis doesn’t have the same magic to it. “Honestly, Genesis feels like just another super major for Ultimate,” he says. “In the Smash 4 days, it meant more because it was my first event where people started realizing I'm really good at this game.” 

Riddles is the upstart of the group, and a rare rising star in Ultimate and in Street Fighter 6—two very different kinds of fighting games. At 21 years old, he is a full decade younger than his two teammates, but even-keeled for his age. “I try not to think about [the results]. I’m trying to go into this tournament with more of a learning mentality, a learning mindset for both games and just try my best.”

He’s still at the start of his competitive career, young enough to be hungry but not veteran enough to have a narrative around the tournament. “Obviously Top 8 would be nice—that’s always been a goal of mine. I’ve never Top 8ed at Genesis and being on that stage sounds really cool. But whatever happens, happens.”    

The three competitors all have different mindsets and different paths heading into Genesis but they converge on San Jose with the same goal: Beat the world.

Preparing to beat the world

In the case of Ultimate, “beat the world” is literal. The best of the best from every corner of the world are all here, and it makes even the simple act of getting out of pools a nightmare. When asked who he’s worried about facing in his pool, Dabuz is quick to reply. “Everyone.”

He chuckles but he means it. “My bracket’s hard because it's all good players. My first match today is a Sephiroth named Randum. Then I fight Jogibu from Japan—that’s to get into Top 64—and then it's Hurt [Rank 12] into Lima [Rank 15] into Sonix [Rank 5]. That’s my Top 8 run.”

Precious few matches are easy ones and so preparation becomes more important than ever. Dabuz isn’t just preparing for Jogibu’s Falcon and for the tough Sephiroth matchup, he also has to look ahead and get ready for Lima’s Bayonetta and Hurt’s Snake because all these matches would be played in one day.

Riddles’s path to Top 8 is no easier. “I gotta fight [Widara] a pretty good bowser junior from NorCal first, [...] after that I gotta fight gackt [Rank 119], who's the best Ness in the world. After that it's gonna be Tweek [Rank 10]. Then I have to fight with a Luigi [Raru, Rank 6] and after that, Spargo [Rank 1].”

As if that wasn’t enough, Riddles has the added challenge of playing in a surprisingly stacked Street Fighter bracket too.

“Today, I equally practiced for both. I played a lot of friendlies in Smash and played a lot of casuals in Street Fighter. I want to do good in both. I study, I VOD review, for both games. I try to practice for both games [on] the same day. It is definitely hard.”

No matter what side of the Smash fence you sit on, the competition is only getting tougher. 

“You can’t sleep on anyone anymore,” Hungrybox says, alluding in particular to how online competition has heated up in Melee. “There might be more fatigue because you need to warm up earlier. [...] I climbed to the top of the ranked leaderboard before I came to Genesis because I knew I would run into a bunch of dumbass matchups, bunch of DKs [Donkey Kongs], Pikachu, Luigis, weird ones. You gotta keep everything in check.”

“You never know how brackets gonna turn out. All you can do is be as consistent as possible.” For Hungrybox, creating that consistency means playing in any bracket you can just to clear off the cobwebs. “You want to remember what being in a bracket is like. If you let the cobwebs linger too long, it's bad for you.”

When the world beats you

The most exciting—and most heartbreaking—thing about modern day Smash is that nothing is a given. The biggest events are usually open brackets where anyone can enter and win, the games are about as democratized as they’ve ever been, and Smash is still one of the biggest grassroots scenes in esports. 

No matter how you prepare, no matter how you beat the world in the past, the world can always beat you.

So it goes for Riddles when Widara, a relative unknown, beats him 3-1 in Pools. It’s not that Riddles is looking past Widara—it’s that Widara is on home turf and is about to have the run of his life. After beating Riddles, Widara will beat Gackt too. 

Riddles sinks to the lower bracket, which is especially deadly at a tournament like this because other top players are falling into the lower bracket early. Riddles faces Kurama [Rank 25 in 2023] just to get out of Round 2 Pools — that’s a match that, on another weekend, could be Winners Finals. To make matters worse, Riddles has likely not planned to face Kurama and hasn’t been practicing to fight Kurama’s Mario. 

In the end, Riddles tumbles out at 65th in Ultimate. In Street Fighter though, he is a standout. He upsets NoahTheProdigy, a top Luke main with insane reaction, and was one misinput away from pushing Enzo to a final round. He goes out at 4th but he’s learned plenty.

Over in Dabuz’s corner, he has triumphed over the regional hero, RandumMNK, but even this is not a great matchup and a slog of a set. He goes up against Jogibu, Japan’s best Captain Falcon, right after and can’t keep up with the F-Zero racer’s pace. 

He has better luck in the lower bracket than Riddles, facing an Olimar-main named MFA—That’s a character and a player that he knows pretty well. A bracket like this does not give you a break for long though, and in the next match, Dabuz squares up against one of Ultimate’s newest stars: ShinyMark. This is the best Pikachu in the world, the best player in Guatemala, and one of the few competitors that’s just as patient as Dabuz.

Dabuz goes up 2-0 on ShinyMark through immaculate defense but the top Pikachu adapts over the next three games, matches Dabuz’s pace, and slows the game to a snail’s crawl. The set is grueling and almost runs to a timeout in three of five games. Every single hit matters as both characters struggle to approach the other and want to hold the lead to force the other to engage. 

ShinyMark almost releases a vital lead towards the end before he realizes that he simply doesn’t have to approach and sits in the corner, zoning out with thunderbolts. From here, he chokes Dabuz out. A tight cluster of spectators has formed behind them, staring over their shoulders as they fight for their bracket lives. When the loss comes, it’s heavy on Dabuz, the frustration visibly knitted into his motions, his grip on the controller, even into the air around him. 

Seeing it play out in the moment, it’s impossible to blame him for that. When the world beats you, it hurts like hell. Dabuz spends much of the rest of the weekend running as many sets as he can, doing as much as possible to be on the other side of “upset” next time. 

When you beat the world

Hungrybox knows both sides of this equation. In his prime, he beat the entire world for three years straight but over the last half-decade, the world has paid him back plenty for it. He’s still ranked in Melee’s Top 10, he’s still made Top 8 at almost every big tournament he’s attended, but he hasn’t won a Supermajor like Genesis since 2020. It’s clear from his bearing and his practice that he’s had enough of the drought — he wants to feel the rain again and he wants to feel it this weekend. 

Crowds gather around his friendlies, asking if their tournament sets, because he looks so locked-in. He doesn’t stay in any social setting long, he drops out of the Ultimate bracket, and he’s holding off all the content work until every match on the day is done.

“I'm a content guy in Ultimate now but, I have to remember to separate the content mind from the Melee mind.” Hungrybox tells Monster at the end of Saturday, after every match has ended. “That's why I did so terribly during the pandemic. It wasn't me being washed or rusty, right? I was just content-pilled. I kept wanting to make my audience happy rather than myself happy.”

“I think now,” Hungrybox muses, “I miss winning, right? Winning a big tournament is kind of priceless.” 

Over the course of that Saturday, Hungrybox inches closer to that priceless feeling that he’s been chasing for the last five years. He moves cleanly through Pools, not dropping a match. In the past, that would’ve been a given but in modern Melee, any Top 64-caliber Fox can be a threat and it’s a good indicator that Hungrybox has 3-0ed two of them. 

His first big hurdle is Joshman an Australian Fox main that just had a career year and now ranks 9th overall in the world. Back in 2020, people considered this kind of matchup a free space for Hbox but, times have changed and the last set these two played, Joshman won by taking a page out of Hungrybox’s book and playing patiently. 

“He’s probably the campiest Fox in the world, him and Aklo [Rank 8]—which is the right way to play,” Hungrybox says. “He's incredibly good at testing my patience.” 

Every game is close and at one point, Hungrybox’s shield button jams up. “During the set, my R button almost locked in place. If that happened, I would have had to SD or forfeit. It did it for a half second. My heart sank. There's probably a scene where I'm rolling a little too often. Thankfully it unstuck, and I won that game. That's why I popped off super hard.”

After clinching the set 3-1, Hungrybox has to face Junebug, the world’s best DK. Puff generally beats DK but few players can upset the meta like Junebug. In order to cinch the set, Hungrybox has to innovate on the fly, bringing in a rare down-air edgeguard that he hadn’t used against DKs in years. It was either innovation or memory of a forgotten old school technique. “I think I either remembered it or figured it out. I actually don't remember,” Hungrybox laughs. 

Sitting in the winner’s side of Top 8, Hungrybox will now only face opponents that have beaten him before. The most dangerous of them is Wizzrobe—the best Captain Falcon player in the world, a monster that Hungrybox helped create. These two have fought each other across Florida locals and regionals for years before this and now, Wizzrobe is easily the best Falcon when it comes to fighting Puff. When the two square off in Winners Semi-Final it’s not terribly close. Wizzrobe dispatches Hungrybox in a quick 3-0.

After that loss, Hungrybox will have to overcome Wizzrobe (either in Grand or Losers Finals) to win the whole thing. For a lot of folks watching, that’s enough to rule Hungrybox right out, but there’s something different in the air this time.

The view at the top will make you cry

When Wizzrobe and Hbox rematch in Losers Finals, it’s like the Puff main is a totally different player. He’s slowed the game way down from the first bout and in that space, he’s getting way bigger punishes than he normally does. These punishes are not easily earned—Wizzrobe has one of the best defenses in Smash—but they are the difference between keeping a lead and forcing Falcon to approach, or losing the lead and struggling to break in.

It all boils down to the last stock of the last game. Whoever finds the first big opening wins. Whoever makes the first big mistake loses. Hungrybox, landing a late up air, finds the opening and Wizzrobe, rolling in, makes the mistake.

 

If you ask the Melee experts, this is the watershed moment of the tournament. Hungrybox’s Grand Finals opponent is Trif, the best Peach in the world, and while Trif is a great player making his own miracle run, Peach is one of the easiest characters for Puff to fight. Trif does make the matchup look doable, but this is a mountain too high for him.

The Grand Finals is a brutal war of attrition because neither character gets any reward for approaching the other. The videographers, photographers, and media mob at the front of the stage, normally rushing into position to catch a big moment, are now sitting and leaning casually as the hour-plus affair plays out. 

The tension is still there for Hungrybox. It may be a slow-build, but he is closer than ever to a moment that he has not felt for five years.

You do not need to be a competitor to understand what this moment means, you just need a summit to reach. Maybe it’s a dream job, a piece of art hanging in a gallery, a personal milestone, maybe it is simply looking in the mirror one day and realizing that you’ve found a good life for yourself. Whatever that summit is, in the moment that you hit it, there is no past, no future and no weight from either. The next day, you will wake up to new goals, new tasks, new peaks in the distance but for now,  it is just the vista that you climbed so long to find. 

When you hit that moment, you learn that the view at the top of the world will make you cry. 

The emotion hits Hungrybox before the match is fully over because his lead is so immense that he has practically already won. The tears overcome him early and he has to shake and talk himself back into the match.

And then, just like that, he’s beaten the world again. He used to do this all the time, it used to not be worth crying over, but it all means so much more now that none of it can be taken for granted. 

As the day goes on, Hungrybox enjoys his victory lap. He celebrates and makes plans with his partner, he speaks to local news reporters, he goes to the afterparty and (literally) wrestles with his longtime rival, Mang0. 

The rest of the competitors have a different mood. They give Hungrybox his flowers, defend his tears on social media, and share in the moment with him, but there is a dissatisfaction there—sometimes slight, sometimes large—that feels like heat building into a roiling boil. It’s nothing personal against the winner — if anything, it’s a form of empathy. 

It is an implicit understanding of what that vista means and a sudden, renewed desire to be the next one to get there. The view at the top will make you cry—that’s why everyone comes to Genesis each year. To chase those tears.