LogFAQs > #918064996

But Tifa was not done yet. From that peak of 89 at the 20:50 mark, she quickly picked up a double-digit update win to close out the hour, then fought through a wall of single-digit wins for both sides over the next 1:20 to leave X's lead at the 22:20 mark at 52. That was when she made her move, pulling three double-digit wins in the next four updates to pull it back to dead even, then adding another on the next update--only for X to win the following one by the exact same amount, pulling it back to dead even with just 1:10 left in the match, and taking the next one by double digits as well. Entering the final hour, X led by a mere 8 votes, and it only took one update for Tifa to turn her single-digit deficit into a double-digit lead. X would win the next two updates to reduce Tifa's lead to a single vote with 45 minutes left in the match, but Tifa won all nine of the remaining updates, many by double-digits, to win by 114--the first triple-digit lead by either side in over 10 hours. In some ways, it could be seen as an anticlimactic ending--this match barely even makes the Top 25 list for closest final margins, and only does so at all because we don't count battles for placement among non-advancing competitors in 3- and 4-ways.

During the final hours of this match, rallies were once again on everyone's minds. Some users, I don't remember who, decided to rally for Tifa on hentai sites, because why not? And since it ended up being such a close match, people blamed the rallies. Did they really make a difference? Maybe. There have always been rallies, though, and it's clear that there wasn't anything this contest on the scale of what Draven and Undertale did in 2013 and 2015. It livened up the contest a bit, and had people wondering what Zelda, Tifa, and Samus could do from here on out--but mostly Zelda and Samus, because Tifa's path was still largely set in stone. She beat Luigi long before hentai rallies were a thing, and she'd be facing Samus and then Sephiroth in the Legends bracket, two Noble Niners that she's already lost to multiple times. Her best chance at pulling some sort of crazy upset would be if Sephiroth managed to continue his historical dominance of Mario, but the consensus was that Mario would finally break through with a win against Seph. At any rate, while there had been some rallying involved, the unlikelihood of Tifa upsetting a Noble Niner this contest meant that the X Classic bandwagon would finally quiet.

It wouldn't last.
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Also known as Cyberchao X.