Top 5 World Cup of Pokémon Performances
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Logo by Pissog.
5. McMeghan, Europe, 2023, SV OU
Record: 7-2
By the time 2023's World Cup rolled around, McMeghan had been one of the all-time great players for longer than many of the contemporaneous playerbase's careers, most famously for his achievements in a metagame older than many of that same playerbase. After such a long career primarily focused on old generations, nobody would expect him to put in the time or effort to put his signature innovative touch on current gen OU; you would expect him to do well, because he's McMeghan, but you certainly wouldn't expect him to go as far as he did in joining the 7-win club, including winning all three of his playoff tiebreak games that brought Europe within one game of winning the tournament. McMeghan is one of the players any team would want tiebreaking for them, regardless of the tier or his record—even if he were 3-6 on the season, this writer would send him up to tiebreak against the undefeated champion of RBY LC UU in a heartbeat—but to achieve this in the volatile current-gen setting of the famously cutthroat SV OU is just extraordinary.
McMeghan demonstrated superb understanding of the tier en route to achieving his record—he didn't just coast off general Pokémon knowledge, as you can't do that in the world of Terastallization. In the quarterfinals, he took on the United Kingdom's 1 True Lycan with an overwhelming barrage of physical attackers, beautifully setting up the cascading onslaught for a late-game clean—Sneasler broke things open for SD Samurott-H, which broke things open for DD Dragonite (the only Pokémon on his team anyone would've expected McMeghan to be familiar with prior to the tournament), which allowed Great Tusk to finish things off.
In the semifinals against Germany's Sylveon used calm mind, McMeghan also demonstrated another long-time skill, an ability to summon massive portions of luck seemingly at will, as he started the game with the world's most fortunate Hurricane Zapdos, which opened the game with a confuse and self-hit against Rillaboom, then two consecutive confusions as Sylveon switched around, and a crit on the fourth turn, where Sylveon finally got an attack off, bringing Zapdos into near-KO range. It wasn't until the fifth turn that Hurricane missed, but as compensation, on the following turn, Hisuian Samurott's Ceaseless Edge that finished Zapdos off also left it paralyzed from Static. As such, McMeghan was able to KO Rott with Cinderace's Low Kick and then even turn its own Spikes against it with Court Change—but it wasn't all easy, as he danced around Sneasler with a beautifully chosen Tera Ghost Dondozo to withstand Tera Fighting Close Combats and even rolled Curse with Sleep Talk, which put the 25%-per-turn timer of Ghost Curse on the weasel.
Under the brightest spotlight yet, the finals tiebreaker, McMeghan faced Spain's Trosko and had a rough early game, losing several key Pokémon…but then he unleashed a comeback so precise and unstoppable it seemed as if he'd been setting it up the whole time—with Trosko's Gholdengo having Tricked its Scarf away and Great Tusk and Ting-Lu brought down, when McMeghan's trusty Dondozo Terastallized once again, it was Steel this time, completely turning the tables on Amoonguss and going for the Curse sweep…boosting, this time. It capped off an incredible clutch performance from a player whose career had already been overflowing with them for the better part of a decade. The reason it's not higher on this list is because it's the only record with two losses, including one in the semifinals, but it was still classic McMeghan, proving that he was just as capable of dominating the current gen as ever.
4. The Grand Babido, Oceania, 2011, BW1 OU
aim, US East, 2014, XY OU
Tricking, Italy, 2020, SS OU
Record: 6-0
The first player to go 6-0 was The Grand Babido, formerly known as babidi1998, and originally known as Heist at the time of the tournament—the name he is still generally known by today. On an Oceania team with with World Cup legends Earthworm and panamaxis, Heist was the only one to go undefeated—and yet, thanks to the presence of Earthworm, he wasn't even chosen for the finals tiebreaker. Since much of the tournament scene in 2011 was played in secret, even many finals matches, most of Heist's games from the tournament have disappeared to time—but this writer recalls the log of his finals match against Indra that was circulating at the time, in which, in typical Heist fashion, he brought a singular style of team—rain, with Ferrothorn, Scarf Scizor, ChestoRest Rotom-W, Calm Mind Jirachi, and Taunt + Will-O-Wisp + Ice Beam Mew—and completely shut down Indra's highly threatening Dragon spam, even earning accusations of counterteaming for the triple Steel alongside Mew; funnily enough, this battle cemented Ice Beam as the standard on TauntWisp Mew, which also increased in popularity afterwards. Again, Heist not being chosen for the ensuing tiebreak—really, the fact he was the THIRD choice for the game—was testament to the outrageously stacked Oceania roster of the time.
In 2014, YouTube's own Joey pokeaimMD joined US East and immediately proved to be one of their clutchest players. With his finger on the pulse of XY OU and a knack for never missing a beat in-game, he wielded seemingly every team style en route to a series of wins made especially impressive by how he came back from difficult positions, as seen in a pair of round one games—after Oceania's Frizy's Terrakion KOed his full HP Landorus-T with a critical hit Stone Edge, he battled back to a tight endgame where he swept with Dragon Dance Mega Tyranitar, while he pulled out a superb skin-of-the-teeth win with his highly unexpected stall team in round one crashing into Europe's Alf's brutal anti-stall team. The playoffs were similarly clinical: in the quarterfinals, aim seemed to never lose control as he wielded Mega Heracross to a win over the best XY player at the time, FLCL. Calm Mind Clefable pulled out a tight game against Spain's reiku in the semis, and, most famously, Taunt + Will-O-Wisp Mew put in work against Brazil's Hill in the finals, stifling even the Thunder Wave attempt of the so-called Brazilian Tyranitar, laying the groundwork for a late-game Scarf Keldeo cleanup. It's easy to forget that, when he was competing seriously, aim was one of the very toughest players to defeat.
Nobody else would finish the tournament 6-0 until OLT champ—soon-to-be back-to-back OLT champ—and Italy captain Tricking led his team to the championship in 2020, prompting a flurry of Covid jokes. He was as on top of the meta as ever and characteristically unafraid to bring wild teams even with the pressure of the playoffs: in his quarterfinals game against Latin America's Lets In The Sun—yes, you read that username correctly—Tricking not only brought Trick Room, but SUN Trick Room. His Hatterene didn't even need the weather to pull off surprise power, though, as its Life Orb-boosted Mystical Fire dropped Excadrill from full. The sun was on display, though, when Tricking gloriously revealed his Torkoal was Choice Specs as its Eruption downed max HP Clefable. Ultimately, though, it was a series of superb predictions with his Life Orb Conkeldurr that allowed Tricking to break through Lets In The Sun's defensive core that had still remained stubbornly resilient in the face of such overwhelming power. Then, in the semifinals and finals, Tricking went the complete opposite direction, while still maintaining that wild edge—he brought two stall teams against France's Fairy Peak and Europe's Twixtry, with both running Xatu and the former running none other than Shedinja. He settled into more “traditional” territory in finals, with Hippowdon and Ferrothorn rounding his team out, but no matter what he brought, he looked just as unstoppable as his record would suggest.
3. husk, Asia, 2009, DPP OU
Conflict, Germany, 2016, GSC OU
bro fist, US Northeast, 2018, SM OU
Record: 7-1
In his day, husk was spoken of with the same sort of reverie today bestowed upon the likes of Empo. World Cup 2009 was not his breakout tournament—it was the fullest, most well-lasting document of the towering dominance he had displayed for nearly half a decade at that point, apart from his archived RMT Astral Projection, which effectively invented hyper offense as we still know it today. Once again, many of his battles have been lost to time, but this writer's old habit of scouring the corners of the Internet has led to the preservation of the stories around this era: husk tended to run circles around his opponents, both metagame- and play-wise—his fellow players regarded him as seemingly incapable of making mistakes—and seemed well and truly unbeatable for anyone even by his skyscraper standards at the time; even fellow all-time greats Philip7086 and panamaxis couldn't stop him in the semis tiebreaker and finals, respectively. 7-0 when it came to the finals tiebreaker, it seemed ridiculous that anyone could stop him, and the fact that the nascent Earthworm managed it was the shock of the year, in large part because husk's performance that year had been so lights out. Asia was WCoP's first dominant team, and husk was a major part of why.
When Conflict was en route to matching the record in 2016, he drew many comparisons to husk, not just because of the numbers themselves but also by how he had been a long-time GSC icon that had ascended to a level where there was the rest of the competition, and then there was Conflict; no matter how talented his opponents, he became well and truly seen as inherently above them by virtue of his experience finally combining into some sort of platonic ideal of GSC. He almost seemed to toy with many opponents, bringing things that went beyond fringe into the realm of nonexistent: in one round one game, he brought a stall team with both Kingdra and Nidoqueen, neither of which have been seen since and served to make the Belly Drum Clefable they supported seem downright standard by comparison… though even that packed the rarely/never-seen choice of Encore in its fourth moveslot.
Conflict didn't shy away from probing and plumbing GSC's depths in the playoffs, either—in quarterfinals against Asia's Andromeda., he brought Alakazam, which was still many, many years away from becoming a standard, and in the semifinals against Italy's Bomber, he actually pulled off a sweep with none other than Swords Dance Meganium, on an all-out offensive team, no less. The utter relentlessness continued into dominant wins in the semis tiebreak against Alexander and the finals win against US East's IFM. Sadly, the husk comparison proved all too accurate, in that the 7-0 Conflict was sent to the finals tiebreak, and wound up taking his first loss to end the tournament against -Tsunami-...though, by that point, Conflict had cemented himself as borderline synonymous with GSC.
Two years later, bro fist joined the club; whereas Conflict drew comparisons to husk, bro fist's WCoP performances had drawn those to Earthworm. Dubbed the “cheat code” of US East-turned-Northeast for his superb records and status as a nigh-automatic tiebreak win, he had been one of the team's most dependable players since 2014, where he went 5-0. He played his first two tiebreakers in 2016, winning in the semifinals against Spain's reiku and the finals against Germany's xray, then in 2017 played and won two more in the quarterfinals against Germany's Mazar and semifinals against Spain's Trosko, before winning the deciding game in 2017's finals against Europe's Ricardo. He went 6-1 in both, and somehow, that wasn't even his best season. Unlike husk and Conflict, he didn't go undefeated only to lose at the end of the tournament; he actually took his sole loss in round one to US South's Energy in between wins against Oceania's false and Greece's Mysterious M.
Quietly irritated by Energy having used his own team against him, bro fist proceeded to dominate the rest of his games with the palpable feeling of a man on a mission. He was called on to tiebreak earlier than usual this time, as he had to play two tiebreakers to try and get US Northeast into the playoffs, and wound up winning both in spectacular fashion against US West's yjh971203 and Germany's Leru, the latter a microcosm of his entire tournament: after losing Landorus-T to a surprise Scarf Heatran Hidden Power Ice early on, he came back with some of the most spectacular plays of his storied career. It just kept going—in quarterfinals against France's Kickasser, he made a series of pivots to bluff Scarf Greninja against a Calm Mind-boosted Mega Alakazam, only to drop the Heatran switch with Specs Hydro Pump. After not being needed in the semis, he returned in finals to defeat z0mOG…twice, being called on to play his third tiebreaker of the tournament; with an extremely uncharacteristic stall team, he once again delivered the deciding win of the tournament. Players wracked their brains over how to beat bro fist—but no matter how many Kyurems you threw at him, during this period, under these circumstances, you simply couldn't.
2. husk, ISMGE, 2010, DPP OU
Trosko, Spain, 2019, SM OU
Eo Ut Mortus, US South, 2021, SS OU
Record: 7-0
husk is the only player to appear on this list twice; fitting, as he is also the only player to ever win seven games in WCoP twice. To make matters even more impressive, he achieved these two separate seven-win records in back-to-back years! He was no longer on the mega-stacked Team Asia, but still led his new team, ISGME (Indian Subcontinent & Greater Middle East), all the way to the finals. Though his games from this year are also not well documented, this writer's old habit of scouring pastebin for every log before his time led him to discovering and saving the log of husk's quarterfinals tiebreaker match against US Metro's reachzero.
(These logs used to be easy to find on pastebin itself, but for some reason the site has scrubbed almost all old pastes from its servers, in doing so wiping out records of many old tournament battles, surely to the dismay of the greater competitive community.)
husk went on to defeat UK's twash in the semifinals and got some sort of revenge in his finals rematch against Oceania, taking down The_Chaser, though once again his team lost—he was actually one of ISGME's mere two wins against Oceania, now firmly embedded as the unstoppable superteam.
7-0 was truly incredible, and it would be nearly a decade before it was matched. In 2019, though, Spanish superstar Trosko did just that. He had already been regarded as an excellent player for many years, with a distinct playstyle and no fear of the spotlight; earlier, we mentioned bro fist defeated him in the 2017 semis tiebreak, but Trosko had also been bro fist's sole loss of the tournament when they'd faced off in the semifinals proper. In 2019, he took his game to a new level, in all regards—this was also lax's historic season, and Trosko was also his sole loss of the tournament—and in a tiebreaker, no less; there was a flurry of chaos to sort out the standings after a wild round one, in which Trosko had defeated an Ojama in his SM prime.
Immediately afterwards, he was thrown into a series of tiebreak matches; in short succession, Trosko went the distance with his trusty SD Gliscor, pulling out a win with his Ditto Chansey balance supporting it in the face of lax's threatening SubSeed Breloom and three-attack Mega Charizard X. Then, Trosko faced off against US West again, this time taking on teambuilding superstar craing, once again using Gliscor Chansey balance, this time on a sand Magnezone setup; what was most incredible about this game was that not only did Trosko dance around craing's own Magnezone-fueled bevy of threats, including a characteristically unusual Salamence, but he extracted an astonishing amount of mileage from a Kartana with 1% health; it survived Diancie's Moonblast for the first KO, then still grabbed two more afterwards in a battle that also saw Trosko use Gliscor to answer Weavile, switching it into Choice Band Knock Off.
Finally, he finished his tiebreak excellence with his Magic Guard balance winning solidly against TDK's own Gliscor balance, with his Heatran staying in on TDK's, catching the Magma Storm and getting the Earth Power KO. A 3-0 round one, and then 3-0 in tiebreakers—all before round two had even started. Trosko had almost single-handedly launched his team to their place in the quarterfinals. This could've easily been a setup for the greatest WCoP performance ever, especially because Trosko proceeded to then win his quarters game against Latin America's Leo—once again, he faced a Weavile, but even that couldn't curtail the power of his Gliscor, especially supported by the Mega Tyranitar that actually switched into the 38% Weav's Knock Off and Pursuited it to death. Sadly, Spain lost that round without even making it to a tiebreaker, and Trosko's tournament ended there; as such, he is the only player on this list to achieve their record without making it to the finals—without even making it to the semifinals, in fact! During this time, he seemed to be able to counter anything with whatever he happened to have on his team—he was well and truly in the zone.
Two years later, US South's Eo Ut Mortus joined the club. A longtime player who seemed to really come into his own in gen 7, Eo continued his unique, precise style of metagaming into gen 8. He had been established as a top player for some time, and in the months prior to this WCoP had had a great SPL that ended bitterly, with him losing a close-as-nails heartbreaker of a deciding finals tiebreaker game. Furthermore, Eo actually lost a game before the tournament even started, as US South had to play in the second round of the qualifying stage, where he lost a difficult game to Argentina's ACR1—but seeing as qualifier games are before the tournament proper, they aren't a blip on his record; feel free to think of him as one of the 7-1s, if you like. Even in that qualifier game, he demonstrated a fearlessness in pushing an aggression that brought out the best of his teams, despite their more balanced nature at first sight—he double switched four times in a row just to rack up Stealth Rock damage.
Once the tournament really started, though, his desire to bring out his best, pushing his skill as far as it would go, became almost palpable—he was an utter machine, as he went from losing that qualifier game to 3-0ing round one, then winning in the quarters, semis, finals, AND finals tiebreak. His starkly threatening style was on full display in round one via a series of measured, yet aggressive double switches allowing his bulky balance teams to unleash the full extent of their wallbreakers, like Nidoking. In quarterfinals, he recovered from an early Weavile misprediction to dance around US Metro's Confide, using the lesser Grassy Terrain setter, Tapu Bulu, over Rillaboom and being rewarded with its ability to check Urshifu-R. In semis, he overcame pokeaim with the use of a seemingly insane Dragapult set, running both Infestation and Shadow Force, which beautifully lured in, trapped, and dispatched Tapu Fini; it was an incredibly tight finish, with Eo's Tapu Fini surviving aim's Choice Band Dragonite ExtremeSpeed with 9% for the game.
Luck reared its ugly head in the finals match against Germany's Relous; Eo's Weavile was first burned by Flame Body when clicking Knock Off into a Heatran—and critting it in the process—then wound up Swords Dancing on a full paralysis before critting Relous' +3 Defense Mew. Eo found himself in his second tournament-deciding finals tiebreak in four months, this time against xray, and it was a ferocious back-and-forth. Eo started off tremendously, with his Scarf Tapu Fini Tricking Toxapex its Choice Scarf, then trapping it with Whirlpool, taking it out with Nature's Madness, and even getting its Scarf back before Pex went down; Eo even immediately absorbed the Toxic Spikes xray had set while trapped with his Galarian Slowking. xray battled back nicely, but Eo pressured him at every corner, until the finale was set up, Eo maneuvering every bit of odds he could get: xray's Weavile had to avoid a crit or burn from Eo's Galarian Slowking's Flamethrower and then hit all three Triple Axels against Eo's Corviknight. Famously, Triple Axel missed the first hit, and Eo wound up winning the tournament en route to his 7-0. Luck and qualifiers aside, it was still an incredible performance no matter how you slice it.
Honorary: Earthworm, Oceania, 2009-2011, DPP & BW OU
We've mentioned Earthworm so many times, we must give him this section. Though he didn't reach the specific records of the players mentioned here–he never got seven wins, his two six-win seasons had one and two losses (2009 and 2010, respectively), and when he went undefeated (2017 and 2018), he only had the chance to do so in four games both times thanks to Oceania's early exit. However, there is still the argument to be made that Earthworm is the greatest World Cup player ever—his record is a stunning 32-9. There are players that approach this record; reiku is 32-12, SoulWind is 32-23, and his main competition for the title, bro fist, is 37-15—between the two of them, it's anyone's call, but either way, Earthworm was the original World Cup king, taking over the mantle from husk's for his tiebreak heroics, year after year, that continued into the next generation. Earthworm actually had the second-best record in 2009, at 6-1, but it goes beyond numbers: before he even got the chance to take husk on in the tiebreaker, he had to defeat Asia's DawnBringer in the last game of the series proper in order to tie things up in the first place. Creating the tie and then winning it was just the beginning, too. In 2010, Earthworm would finish 6-2, with both his losses coming in the first round—while he triumphed over France's Private, he lost to US Central's Deep Thought and US West's Scofield, with the latter luck-marred game decided by a few percent being not only a farewell to the soon-to-be-banned Salamence, but one of the few battles of the time still documented today (it can be found here). Earthworm was then thrown into two tiebreaker matches to keep Oceania alive and send them to the quarterfinals: he defeated US Metro's Stone_Cold and then had some of the luck from the Scofield game return to him in a win against his longtime rival, Canada's Gouki. By a stroke of luck, this writer happens to have asked for the log of the battle against Gouki many years ago and still had it saved, so you can read it here.
Finally, in 2011, with the metagame he was called on to win the tournament for Oceania in the finals tiebreaker. Despite only being 3-3 up until that point, and having two teammates with six wins—in addition to the 6-0 Heist, there was also the consideration of Earthworm's long-time partner in crime, panamaxis, who had won the deciding game against ISGME's Lady Bug the previous year (the log of which has also been saved!) was presently 6-1 and had come close to winning the tournament for Oceania en route to going 7-0 in his nearly-deciding finals match against Scofield, in which luck interfered. The fact Earthworm was chosen said it all about how highly he was regarded—and there, he brought it home once again, in one of the most hyped, iconic, unusual battles ever seen, one that has remained documented for us today. Again, when bro fist was cementing himself as the new tiebreak king, there's a reason he was compared to Earthworm.
1. lax: US West, 2019, SM OU
Record: 9-1
lax's 2019 is unlikely to be matched for a long, long time—to even play ten games is incredibly unlikely, to say nothing of the near-superhuman feat that is winning nine of them on a list where nobody else has even breached eight wins. In 2018, lax was thrown into BW OU in the finals tiebreaker against BKC and wound up with a Cloyster sweep, but now, he was in the much more familiar territory of SM OU, and there, he was dominant. His sole misstep came in the aforementioned tiebreaker game against Trosko, but other than that, he was lights out. Most famously, he was utterly lights out in his two quarterfinals games against none other than bro fist; in the first game, he demonstrated his propensity for incredibly risky moves that managed to pay off, leaving Magnezone in on Landorus-T and getting to Volt Switch on the U-turn, a potentially game-losing move if it didn't work—but somehow, lax seemed to pull these plays off consistently. In the tiebreaker game, his Substitute Focus Punch Mega Mawile exerted insane pressure right from the jump, enabling him to ride the U-turn chain of Landorus-T and Victini to victory, even denying Z-Magnezone a Gigavolt Havoc KO, with Victini's monstrous V-create ensuring Chansey couldn't pull off a comeback sweep.
In the semis against Germany's FullLifeGames, lax's early Devastating Drake with Garchomp in lieu of Stealth Rock put him incredibly far ahead, letting him ride out the victory—and then, he was called on to tiebreak again against xray, putting in a dominant 20-turn win with early Stealth Rock followed up by the brutal HP Ground Volcarona, Continental Crush Landorus-T and Protean Greninja putting the game away; this match decided the semis tiebreak and sent West to finals with lax already at eight wins, which would've given him the #1 spot on this list even if he'd lost in finals AND a finals tiebreak. However, it didn't get to that point. By the time he played Tamahome, a loss would create a tiebreaker, while a win would end the tournament. An excellent lead-off and first-turn double switch led to lax's Amoonguss' early Spore nabbing Tama's Mega Medicham, which allowed Greninja an early layer of Spikes, and from there, lax remained in control—even when Tama's Rotom-W Defogged, it was Toxiced for its trouble, and even Hoopa-U's monstrous Choice Band Hyperspace Fury just barely came up short against both lax's Heatran and Greninja, leaving it also Toxiced and chased out, the threat neutralized. A few Greninja/Landorus-T U-turns later, lax's Landorus-T unleashed Supersonic Skystrike onto Tama's own, and the game was almost a formality from there—lax got Rocks, denied Tama's Defog with Tornadus-T's Taunt, and that was that, capping off the greatest WCoP performance of all time.
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