Eighteen year-old MKLeo's career as a top professional Super Smash Bros. Ultimate player may already be one for the esports history books. A recent Reddit post by user HollowLoch has helped to quantify just how impressive his past season's accomplishments have been. Their post points out that MKLeo's lowest placement during the current Smash Ultimate tournament season was second. Otherwise, he's only ever won with a multitude of first place victories.
In Smash esports, seasons are biannual, determined by a range of time selected for each new Panda Global Ranking. This is a list of the top 50 Smash players created by Panda Global Gaming, more-or-less understood to be the agreed-upon ranking of Smash players by accomplishment and therefore skill level. The current Smash Ultimate season began on July 12th with Low Tier City 7 and will end with Super Ascension on December 15th.
Even before that, Leo's record is impressive, with only five non-first-or-second placements from between the release of Smash Ultimate and the start of the current season (during which time he entered 13 tournaments and placed first at seven of them.) His lowest placement during this time was 33rd at Umebura Japan Major 2019. That said, this is significant to MKLeo's hero's journey in that it was his first time maining Joker, a character he'd not only play practically-exclusively in ensuing tournaments including his current marquee season, but come to define and embody.
User stu2b50 in the comments further quantifies MKLeo's impressive streak. Winning $82,000 in total this year, Leo has single-handedly out-earned all-time great Melee player Hungrybox this year by a factor of four, and won more than a third of the prize money Melee great Mew2King has earned throughout his entire career.
That said, contributing to Leo's high earnings is the large prize pools offered by many major Smash Ultimate tournaments, due to Ultimate appealing to a much wider player base. Given MKLeo's skill level, however, maintaining this win and near-win streak could very well lead him to setting some records down the line. Right now MKLeo is the undisputed king of Smash Ultimate, and based on his current career trajectory, that crown may not be leaving his head any time soon.
Source: Reddit