Why would you take Zero out of the equation though when he's the only one of those Sheik players who isn't outskilled by ESAM? If there were at least results vs Mr r or Void you could cite it'd be another thing but using a 0-1 record against k9 who's certainly not a top 5 Sheik isn't exactly helping your case here. Because what your argument boils down to is that ESAM generally loses to Zero and is overall even against Sheik players below his own skill level.
So all you're saying is that by results Sheik clearly wins the matchup. I assume you're not actually arguing otherwise?
Vinnie and Void are not really much below ESAM's skill level at this point tbf. Both are highly skilled players with solid results under their belts that are capable of beating pretty much anyone. You're underselling Vinnie if you think ESAM's record against him is not a point in his favor; Vinnie and Void are close in skill. I decided not to ponder his results against ZeRo further because it doesn't tell us much. He has a positive record against every single player on the planet (except Seagull Joe but lol). He generally loses to ZeRo and ZeRo is the best in the world. This tells us nothing about any matchup. If we look at ZeRo's results, for instance, it is possible to conclude that Diddy Kong beats Sheik. This is clearly not the case if you know anything about the matchup.
Megafox losing to ESAM is the expected outcome though regardless of the matchup.
If you want actually representative results of that matchup you cannot ignore that the two best Fox players in the USA - Larry and Xzax -
have yet to drop a single game against ESAM's Pikachu in competitive sets. I don't know to what else that amounts than to Fox having a winning record against Pikachu.
Money matches are not results.
Not even close. I am talking about tournament results. I am going to ignore a random money match from the Sky house and a grudge match with literally all of SoCal in the room cheering for Larry. Forgive me if I don't think these are environments representative of tournament skill. Megafox is widely considered to be among the top Fox players in the country and the world, and ESAM has actually faced him in tournament. This is far more representative.
Viran already pointed this out but actually Nairo is ahead vs ESAM in this matchup if you add up games. And since ESAM is also 1-1 with dabuz that only confirms my point that no evidence exists to show that Pikachu wins the matchup.
Nairo is ahead in terms of game count but this is inflated by the fact that he's gone secondaries numerous times when ZSS would not work. These results do nothing to combat the solid theory from players of both characters that Pikachu wins the matchup.
1.) What exactly do you base the claim on that Pikachu 'destroys' DK? Or Bowser for that matter?
2.) These characters minus Falcon generally get destroyed by a lot of stuff. You wanna hold Pikachu murdering Ganon in his favor?
3.) 4-5 characters getting destroyed by Pikachu doesn't mean that Pikachu is a problem for most midtier characters.
I base this claim off the fact that DK literally cannot recover against Pikachu, gets comboed super hard already and gets ludicrous extensions because DK can't land. I didn't feel like listing every single character that loses to Pikachu, but most mid tiers have issues with Pikachu. Characters like ROB, DK, Falcon, Wario, Ike, Wii Fit, Greninja, Mega Man, etc just don't do well. There simply aren't as many Pikachu players, so you see these problematic matchups less. It's exceedingly simple logic but people seem to have this idea in their heads that Pikachu doesn't do great against the rest of the cast because there isn't a high volume of Pikachu players to show these matchups, NAKAT barely goes to anything and there really isn't a huge sample size of ESAM vs these top players of each character in the first place because the game has only been out for a year and ESAM doesn't go to every single event.
btw Pika's top tier matchups are like
45-55 to 50-50 (based off general consensus/what results would suggest)
55-45 (results don't really show much here, but the theory of the matchup suggests that pikachu's robust edgeguard game and many moves to deal with luma give him a slight advantage despite rosa's range)
60-40 (zss has issues with shorter characters & lackluster oos to deal with quick attack in neutral, nairo has expressed frustrations and used secondaries, and esam's thoughts)
50-50 (mk is better at killing but outside dash attack confirms killing pika is actually pretty hard b/c no edgeguards and pika has a better neutral and solid punish game on mk too, results don't really say anything either way)
55-45 (the only reason this matchup isn't further in pikachu's favor is shoryu and pika being pretty light; pikachu's short stature makes ryu's nair approaches and up tilts plain less effective, has solid edgeguards on ryu, and good multihit moves to deal with focus attack + ryu kinda has trouble dealing with mobility and pikachu has plenty of it)
55-45 to 60-40 (the things that tip this matchup in pikachu's favor are edgeguarding and pika's awkward small frame, which matters a lot because it's harder to hit with some of cloud's most important b&bs like falling up airs, full hop dairs, and up tilts)
55-45 (this is based solely off the opinions expressed by zero, mvd, and esam bc i don't know much about this matchup)
50-50 (fox is better at raw kills/confirms and he might even win neutral slightly, but pikachu's punish game on fox is utterly insane and the edgeguard is free af)
40-60 (the issues in this matchup lie in the fact that pikachu loses some of his normal advantages; mario doesn't care about pikachu being short and doesn't have to deal with the brutal fast faller punishes and has cape to deal with jolts and is better at killing. pikachu has better aerial hitboxes to deal with mario's though and can employ smart quick attacks. he's also good at applying corner pressure and can edgeguard mario)
50-50 (villager is stupid good against quick attack but pikachu is stupid good against slingshots so these factors kind of balance out, villager has effective responses to other parts of pikachu's pressure though, pikachu can apply a lot of pressure in off-stage situations while villager really cannot)
55-45 to 50-50 (this is what esam thinks of the matchup and although he's known for overrating matchups, this is pretty reasonable seeing as he's historically done extremely well in this matchup outside 1 set loss to 6wx; it's essentally sonic has the mobility to keep up with quick attack and may be able to kill a bit earlier, but pikachu has effective options for stuffing spin dash and disgusting edgeguards on sonic so it works out to slightly in pikachu's favor or even)
