Masahiro Sakurai lost for the first time during his Smash presentation

It's an exciting time for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate fans now that Tekken's Kazuya Mishima is playable. Masahiro Sakurai and the rest of the development team did an excellent job designing the character. They even went the extra mile to explain exactly how this complex character is played during the "Mr. Sakurai presents Kazuya" presentation that aired before his release date.

Like with many of the other previous presentations of this sort, Sakurai put his own credibility on the line by challenging himself to win with the upcoming DLC character by using them to fight unfair battles against the A.I. Though Sakurai's gameplay isn't exactly on par with top level competitors for his game, the segment still manages to be quite entertaining and informative. Leading up to the Kazuya presentation, Sakurai had never actually lost during one of these challenges, but that was about to change.

To showcase Kazuya's gameplay, Masahiro Sakurai decided to pit him up against the fighters the Tekken rep dropped off into a volcano during the Kazuya Mishima announcement trailer. In other words, it was Kazuya vs. Ganondorf, Captain Falcon, Min Min, Pit and Marth.

Technically, we could see that Kazuya was teaming up with Ryu, Ken, Terry Bogard and Little Mac (fighting themed characters), but Sakurai would promptly self destruct with Kazuya's teammates to make it a 1v5 match up in Squad Strike mode.

Things started off well for Sakurai as he was able to dispatch Pit without taking too much damage. Sakurai even managed to damage Pit via Kazuya's Demon's Wrath side taunt, which actually functions as a very damaging attack for Kazuya.

Then came Min Min. As Sakurai's damage climbed into the 60% range, he began to panic. This resulted in Sakurai using Kazuya's down aerial to descend down into the bottom blast zone.

Unfortunately for Masahiro Sakurai, he was unable to recover back from this error. Seemingly for gags, Sakurai played it off as though he were embarrassed for performing so poorly, which ended up being a funny moment during the video.

"Ahhhh, darn it," exclaimed Sakurai. "I didn't do very well. Let me try again."

Luckily, Sakurai was able to beat his self-imposed challenge on the very next attempt. Still, the damage had been done as Min Min had humiliated the legendary Masahiro Sakurai at his own game.

Like with just about every other DLC character so far, Kazuya Mishima was launched alongside a balance patch that adjusted a few of the many fighters. Through these patches, some characters would receive buffs, while others were nerfed.

Version 12.0.0's most nerfed character ended up being... Min Min. The ARMS rep received nerfs to her up smash (slower start up, slower reflect speed, weaker knockback) and her up special (grabs ledge slower while recovering).

This was only a coincidence, right? Min Min wasn't simply nerfed because she defeated Sakurai during his big moment, right?

In actuality, a perception in the Smash community was starting to develop that Min Min was a very strong character. Many players were beginning to express a dislike of the Min Min match up, which was becoming especially prominent in the Japanese tournament scene.

Ultimately though, the nerfs aren't too bad for Min Min. Before the patch, Min Min's up smash was perceived to basically be the best up smash in the game as it gave the long-reaching character one of the best out of shield options, which inevitably made Min Min difficult to deal with even while up close.

The nerf to Min Min's recovery appears to be an attempt at further emphasizing Min Min's weakness of having poor recovery options. Though Min Min's neutral and advantage state are very strong, she is supposed to have a difficult time surviving once knocked off stage.

Overall, it felt like Min Min was probably going to be due for some nerfs regardless of what happened during the Sakurai presentation. Still, it's pretty funny and ironic to think that Sakurai might've had Min Min nerfed as punishment for the events that unfolded that day.

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