I remember when I first encountered Fatman (I highly doubt he remembers me). It was during the Sm4sh speculation days on the Pic of the Day thread, I distinctly recall seeing a Popeye avatar with a name that legitimately made me chuckle (the mental image is strong with this one). I quickly grew to enjoy seeing his posts back then, as they were informative while containing an opinion I found worth reading.
After Sm4sh finished getting updates, I vanished from Smashboards for a year. But then I returned upon Ultimate's announcement. During my return, I gravitated to two boards: the Ultimate speculation thread (where many leaks and rumors were discussed and debunked, oh the fun) and the Ganondorf thread (which I started, no bias yeah?). Lo and behold, I found a familiar fatman on the speculation thread. When the speculation thread crashed from the thread limit and had to be rebooted, something about the feel of it changed (which probably had to do with the "no more leak talk" rule they added). I found myself in this thread here, only to find this ice-slipping fatman yet again (and a few others from the speculation thread I recognized). I value his opinion, enjoy reading his posts, and also enjoy his speculation.
The best part of him being an informed speculator? He can be wrong. He gets to retain his reputation, even if he's wrong. That's pretty incredible, nowadays.
Guess who doesn't get to retain their reputation if they're wrong? The insiders he has contact with. He speculates because he isn't in danger of losing something, and that's because most of us in this thread accepted him regardless of his connections. His connections make his posts that much more exciting, yes, but they're not why we enjoy his written content. I've found this thread to be a very familiar, and lively replacement for the original speculation thread. We all have our disagreements here, but in some... very distant and indirect way, it's sort of like a plausible somewhat family-ish, thing.
In the end, we're all here for one reason: Geno. And Fatman just happens to be someone whose opinion on Geno is much appreciated by a lot of us folks in here. Keep on being fat, man!
Edit: I'm amazed how I never bumped into Fatman on NSider/NSider2 (if you were there). I was a regular myself of those forums.