It's been a long and victorious road but the 'Best Pokemon Ever' March Madness Bracket is finally resolved. We started with 64 of the best of the best Pokemon pulled from the well over 700 Pokemon currently in the series. Nearly half of the Pokemon entered into the bracket were from Generation I with Generation III being the least popular to start. All of the Pokemon types except for Rock were represented by those in the bracket, however it was clear that one type was well beloved… Water. Eighteen of the 64 Pokemon were Water type. That's nearly a third. Ice, Dragon, and Fairy only had one each. The Pokemon with the most votes in the seeding was the adorable Squirtle, a Generation I Water Pokemon… and having said that…
(click to view a larger version of this image)Squirtle Wins!Indeed, Squirtle is king, hence that crown. We need that crown in Miitomo! Lets take a look at Squirtle's reign shall we? Squirtle started up against Jigglypuff.. where it obliterated the ol' pink puff. 13 out of 15 votes went to Squirtle. When it went up against Mewtwo next it actually had a surprisingly tough time. It only won 10 out of 18 votes. One single vote would have swayed it into a tie and one more would have changed things all together. Alas it did not. In the next round Squirtle found itself against a wannabe. A poser. It was Piplup, another water starter from a later generation. Squirtle took it down swiftly with a 17 vote win out of 19 total votes. This was where I first personally voted for Squirtle. Meanwhile all my other favorites were picked off one by one. In Round 4 Squirtle came up against an old friend, Bulbasaur. Our of the 14 votes in this round, it beat Bulbasaur with 9 votes.
Then came the final round. I did things a bit differently this time by kind of combining the semi-finals and finals. In doing so it allowed me to help muddy the results, though this may not have been a surprise anyway. I had all possible outcomes requested however of course the winner of Blastoise and Squirtle would move forward, as would the winner of Ivysaur and Scizor. Squirtle beat Blastoise with 13 votes out of 18. It was no contest. Meanwhile, on the other side of things Scizor was winning against Ivysaur until the last vote which tied things up. With no further rounds and because of how I did things, I didn't see fitting that we had to have a tie-breaker vote. Scizor and Ivysaur tied with 9 votes each. The reason a tie-breaker wasn't required is because Squirtle beat BOTH of them in their match ups. Squirtle beat Scizor slightly less better than Ivysaur. Squirtle had 14 votes against Ivysaur's 4 and 12 votes against Scizor's 6. Squirtle… was absolutely the king. Bow down to your turtle leader.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Of course then there were the other special bonus match ups. Thank you all for voting in those as well. Lets run through those results.
Jigglypuff vs. Jolteon:Winner: JolteonWith this match up I intended to see who out of the two worst voted Pokemon would win. Jigglypuff and Jolteon both only had two votes in their respective initial match ups, losing both times. However when paired to each other, Jolteon took the crown with a 13 to 5 result. I guess Super Smash Bros. doesn't guarantee you the love now does it?
Bidoof vs. Galvantula:Winner: GalvantulaWith this match up I wanted to take two hotly contested Pokemon and see how they would fare against each other. Both had lost their initial match ups also but the fight was more hard fought. Bidoof was up against Malamar and Galvantula was up against Fletchling. In this pairing the electric spider that Shadowlink touted had beaten Bidoof (a Pokefreak911 favorite) by a whopping 14 to 4 result. I guess that Galvantula has some fight in him!
Malamar vs. Fletchling:Winner: TIEWith this match up I wanted to compare the winning Pokemon from the previously mentioned contests. Fletchling was actually leading at the very end until a certain man named Ploot cast his vote. The man who championed Malamar and campaigned successfully in the first round had evened the score. With no other votes though, this matchup was left undecided. Perhaps it's poignantly appropriate that these two would continue to be locked in the epic battle of 'Who is better?' as they were the focus of such similar spotlights.
Zubat vs. Rattata:Winner: RatattaWith this match up I just wanted to see which annoying Generation I Pokemon was more appealing. Both are found to CONSTANTLY bother you while in grass or the caves. In the end it was close but with 10 votes out of 18, Ratatta took the crown. Then it Hyper Fang'd Zubat into a major faint and kept engaging into battle with me. I'm still trying to run away.
Golduck vs. Psyduck:Winner: PsyduckWith this match up I wanted to focus on our friend Psyduck here. He was the under dog in this whole race. He made it to the Elite Eight. He performed rather strongly. He knocked out Samurott by eight votes. He knocked out Torterra by five votes. He took Alakazam out by seven votes. This little confused water Pokemon was surprising everyone! It was Round 4 when the little dude lost to Scizor by four votes. So I wanted to see if perhaps his evolutionary brother would have faired better. Hint: He wouldn't have. Psyduck was preferred by a 13 to 5 ratio.
Toxicroak vs. Arcanine:Winner: ArcanineWith this match up I wanted to see how Arcanine would have done against Toxicroak. Toxicroak lost by a measly single tie-breaker vote, which put Charizard into the running. When Charizard lost to Arcanine, I was pleased as I prefer Arcanine. Arcanine also barely lost to Ivysaur (by two votes). In the end, had Toxicroak made it through that critical pass, he would have lost severely anyway. Arcanine beat Toxicroak by a 10 point spread.
Gallade vs. Heracross:Winner: HeracrossWith this match up I wanted to showcase Heracross a bit. It was yet another underdog in this fight. The beloved Bug and Fighting combo proved unique enough to make it a few rounds in. However it eventually lost to Ivysaur in Round 3 by only three votes. In Round 2 Heracross beat Hitmonchan by more than double the points but I was curious if his reign would have ended early if Gallade had eliminated Hitmonchan. The answer? Nope. Heracross was a proven fighter. Gallade lost by six votes to Heracross.
Dragonite vs. Trubbish:Winner: DragoniteDragonite is my favorite Pokemon okay!? When it was horribly knocked out by that bitch Ho-oh in Round 1 I was devastated. 10 crazy votes had overpowered Dragonite's five sane ones. This was especially a bummer when Ho-oh lost in the next round to Totodile. So I needed to end this whole thing out on a positive note… I had to see Dragonite win one. Win one for me. So of course I essentially rigged it with what I thought was an easy decision… a bag of trash. hah! I was surprised however to see that two folks voted for stinky ol' Trubbish. nate38 and Zero. Perhaps they just prefer the underdog, but Zero really thought a trash-bag Pokemon was funny as hell. He's not wrong.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------So that's it. All done. Go home! If people are interested in how any specific match ups went, ask and I'll tell you. Speaking of people though… I want to do a few shout outs.
First of all, thank you to all who voted! I really appreciated the turn out. When I do these things for the site, the greatest gift I could have is participation. In total we had twenty total users who voted in the brackets. Not everyone was able to vote in each but besides myself, seven others had voted each and every time. Rain or shine. So thank you to those folks; nate38, ShadowLink, Ploot, Ninsage, TriforceBun, Pokefreak911, and Zero. Most of the rest of you missed early on but kept going till the end and I appreciate that. Our lowest overall turnout was just after the holidays (and my April Fools post) with 11 votes in Round 4. Perhaps things would have changed with more votes. However Round 3 and these finals saw 19 and 18 voters respectively. That's no measly feat! Thank you!
Second and lastly, I need to do another shootout to those who managed to vote perfectly in any of the brackets. Due to the way I did things, all brackets except for the last two had sixteen Pokemon up against each other (or eight matches). Believe it or not, multiple people had perfect guesses.
Round 1A: nate38, Octorockin, and the fly
Round 1B: nate38
Round 1C:
no one…Round 1D: Mr_Mustache
After that nobody else had perfects (unless you count Hero_of_Hyrule in Round 4; who voted after the cut-off but ended up voting for everyone who already won).
One final shout out to Mop it up who 'almost' nabbed a perfect in the final round. Since we had some ties either answer there would count. The only one she chose was Ivysaur over Squirtle and that's perfect to mention because as I stated… Squirtle kicked everyone's ass. Bow to your turtle king. Even you Uncle Grippy!
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