As if there was ever any doubt. I generally subscribe to the idea that gamefaqs contests may not have made it to 2018 if we didn't have a single result that put Link's absolute dominance in doubt.
As I've said elsewhere in this thread, you kinda need everything to go your way to beat the King. You need a game like Kingdom Hearts to pull people who wouldn't normally play a Final Fantasy game to get to know a dude like Cloud. You need CELDA to manifest and hurt Link in the process. You need a site shift that favours Square in general. And even then, you still need a fantastic night vote to slow down Link's absolute dominance in the day.
Cloud/Sonic and Seph/Mario foreshadowed this, as I've said in like 6 other writeups, and Link just wasn't able to keep up with Cloud in 03. In a way, I'm almost surprised Link managed to get close to 48% on 03 Cloud. 03 Cloud is a killer.
This match is so ginormous that I honestly forget that it wasn't the 2003 final. It's like, did you know that Daigo's full parry on Justin Wong (you know the one) was in losers finals, and that he got beat by a Yun player named KO in grand finals 3-1? That's how I feel about this match. Link/Cloud is an endless "rivalry", a rivalry that is now like 13-1, but that 1 time will always make this seem bigger than it is. For one day, Cloud breathed life into these contests as we saw Link lose his only match against an actual character in 15 years.
