The final hours before players get invited to a Super Smash Bros. Summit event are always filled with wild antics, lots of streams, and last-minute vote drops that players like William “Leffen” Hjelte try to coordinate.
As the first invites were sent out for the Smash Ultimate Summit 2, Leffen’s community pooled its votes and provided the spirit bomb necessary for him to get in today. But what’s even crazier is how the South Carolina Smash scene pushed so hard and got a smaller player, Randy “RFang” Fang, in too.
RFang doesn’t have the size of viewership that Leffen or the other names on the ballot, such as Eric “ESAM” Lew and Ezra “Samsora” Morris, do. In fact, he hasn’t top cut a single tournament in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. But he had the backing of players like Griffin “Fatality” Miller and campaigned harder than anyone to make it into Smash Ultimate Summit 2.
He had friends do his makeup and completed dozens of challenges, like smashing watermelons, on stream to get votes. On top of that, Smash players from South Carolina, Georgia, and other areas around there did some unordinary stuff, too.
It ended up coming down to around 1,000 votes between RFang and Samsora, which the Pichu main barely pulled out in the end. That last drop of 1,000 votes is the equivalent of around $300, which was raised by one of his friends eating a ghost pepper cockroach. RFang literally got in because of the support of his friends and the community.
Meanwhile, Leffen actively protested doing anything to the extreme that Summit voting season is known for. He put up a few incentives for various voting milestones, such as reviewing anime at 22,000 and reading Reddit threads at 25,000, but nothing extremely out of the ordinary.
Both he and RFang were hovering around 22,000 votes for a while, but when more votes from other players came in, Leffen shot up the charts. Before the massive influx of votes, he maxed out at 25,000 votes. But when the timer hit zero, he surpassed 50,000. That means his community spent about $7,500 over the span of five minutes to make sure he’d be competing in Ultimate.
The following wave of voting will take place over the next 24 hours, with Samsora, Adam “Armada” Lindgren, and ESAM sitting above the 25,000 mark. There are still three spots available for Smash Ultimate Summit 2 through community voting and three others that will be filled at The Big House 9 and 2GG: Nightmare on Smashville.
