The History of CFL Melee

For a stretch, Central Florida was arguably the strongest Melee region on the planet. Hungrybox — who has said being in Orlando is "definitely the reason" he got successful at Smash — won CEO 2016 in front of 678 Melee entrants, then took EVO 2016 over Armada weeks later for what was then the largest prize in Melee history, on his way to ranking #1 in the world. Mew2King, widely considered the greatest Smash player of all time, moved to Florida in 2015. Wizzrobe peaked at #5 in the world, Colbol had been top-10 ranked, and Gahtzu's Falcon was nationally feared.

The peak: GENESIS 5 in January 2018, where Plup beat the world's #1, #2, and #3 ranked players to win the whole thing — and the grand finals he won was against Hungrybox. An all-Central-Florida grand finals at a supermajor. CEO 2017's Melee finals had been Hungrybox vs Plup, too. It got so deep that Hungrybox started running his own monthly, Overlords of Orlando, which pulled 96 entrants to its first edition in March 2018.

The region proved it as a team, too. Florida's crew — Hungrybox, Mew2King, Plup, Wizzrobe, Colbol — took second at The Big House 6's regional crews in 2016, and in 2018 Central Florida entered The Big House 8 as its own crew (Hungrybox, Plup, Wizzrobe, Gahtzu, Drunksloth) and won the whole thing, closing out NorCal in the finals with seven stocks to spare.

A weekly in Orlando could hand you a bracket run through multiple top-10 players in the world. Few regions, ever, have been able to say that.

As the legends toured and some moved away — Plup eventually to Oregon, Wizzrobe to Texas — a new generation took over the local brackets. Forrest (who'd already been ranked #6 in the world in Project M as MrLz) topped the regional rankings, with Panda, Krudo, Komodo, Captain G, and Lad rising behind him. When the pandemic shut down venues, the scene moved to Slippi netplay and kept playing, then rebuilt its locals on the other side.

The era opened with one more trophy: at The Big House 9 in October 2019, the Florida crew — Hungrybox, Wizzrobe, Plup, Mew2King, and Forrest — won the regional crews title, beating SoCal in the finals. Back-to-back Big House crew championships for the region.

Today's Central Florida isn't living off its history — it's still producing nationally ranked players. On SSBMRank 2025, Krudo sits at #16 in the world, Panda at #24, JChu at #31, and OG Kid at #78 — with Komodo ranked the year before. Gahtzu has now been on Central Florida power rankings for over a decade, a living link to the scene's earliest days.

The events keep coming, too: Central Florida Face-Off 2025 in Orlando saw Krudo win over Komodo and JChu, and at CEO 2025 — still in Florida, twenty-plus years in — the Melee grand finals came down to Hungrybox vs Wizzrobe. Both of them products of this scene — and Wizzrobe has since come home, debuting at #1 on the 2025 Season 2 CFL PR. Weeklies keep running across the Orlando area, and this site is part of that story. Come find a bracket.