. . . ^^^No one said anything about Blaze homs. And in all actually you could say the same about Lucario in the move-set area because he could actually be a GOOD Fox clone with a few M2 B/ smash like moves which wouldn't be against his character. IMO the main reason that people don't connect this to Lucario at first sight is because of the same reason they connect Blaze to Falcon. . . their sig attacks.
( Blaze kick, a attack that has never been preformed the same by any 2 Blaziken's in the anime, makes people think Faclon kick well PB doesn't have any connection to a gun. . .BUT as seen with the Lucario=M2 clone phase it does connect to something else in Melee)
Oh, and the Blaze thread really isn't much to go by. I can't see "most" smashers being repped in that tiny thread.
And, as I have said before, it's reasonable to assume that "returning characters" who where clones will be( for the most part) different in the move-set area to at least the extense Lugai was. Clones, as we all know, was mostly the result of how rushed SSBM was and the fact that they needed more characters. Time isn't tight like it was for melee and the divs have stated that they want to change the returning characters (to what level, we don't know) so I REALLY don't see them having to make more clones.
Also, Blaze is in DP. (As in, ALL pokemon are in DP. Don't have to be a wild and/or trained pokemon int said game to be traded in).
On the whole "not popular in Japan" thing. . . it's actually pretty funny. Lucario's fan-base has taken a pretty hard hit in Japan once people got him a saw that he was just. . . .slightly above arvg.
And by what means are we ranking "popularity"? By how much people on these forums like him because of his looks? If you add up every member on this site (even the majority that doesn't come to this part of the forums to voice their thoughts on pokemon), every member of Serebii.net (even the majority that don't actively post on the SSBB topic about characters) and every memeber on the Nsider that actually goes to the smash area you will see that it only adds up to a very VERY small % of he people who actually got SSBM sometime in the past.
"But he has a movie" . . . Soo? That movie had (in the states atleast) very lil promo (15-20 secs on WB saterday kids shows for about 2 weeks. . .) and was a DvD only movie mostly because Nintendo knows that the pokemon movies aint popular over here. So the masses don't really know him (I know a pokemon fangirl who plays every main pokemon game (RB-RSE) who recognized him only slightly from the promo on WB because she doesn't go on the web trying to research the newest pokemon games. . . she didn't even know his name) and all his actual fan-base and popularity is held on line . . . by the few on-line smashers that actually voice their opinion on the matter of pokemon in SSBB. . .at least we can say that Blaziken is well known amoung the masses.
And typing. . . .I don't really think Sakurai cares too much about it personally. He only showed us one pokemon he was interested in (Gard, who happens to be greatly loved in Japan) and that pokemon has the same typing as M2. Really, the point is that when it comes to pokemon we don't know what the divs are thinking. Yeah, Gard was the only pokemon at that time that Sakurai showed us that he finds interesting and she beat out Blaze. But she also beat out Lucario seeing as he was popular over there at that time and has been known about sence 05 with the release of his movie and pokemon MD (which he cameoed in too some level).
I really wouldn't be shocked if he added in Gard, replaced Jpuff with Buneary (or evol), replaced Pichu with P&M or 4th gen Pika rip and added Meowth.
We really can't say "w/e pokemon "deserves" to be in more than w/e pokemon" because we don't have a hand in what they do. . .the ones that "deserve" it the most are the ones that get in IMO.
(Sorry for the unreasonablie long reply. It's the result of bored+not remembering I got to work tomarrow/ today. Blaze wasn't apart of my other post to the least bit so theres no need to reply about her parts in this post unless you want to keep her in the subject. . . .to which you where the one to bring her into)
Edit- Lucario wasn't the 2nd 4th gen pokemon to be released.
. I thought they maded the movie to promote a new type of pokemon called aura 
