Image Credit: Smash Pro Tips
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Another Smash tourney, another demand to ban Steve. At Supernova 2025, top Super Smash Bros. Ultimate player Angel “Onin” Mireles left the competition after the crowd continuously booed them for winning with Steve.
Minecraft Steve was one of the last DLC fighters announced for Ultimate — and his insane kit and exploits have caused the competitive Smash community to hate on him ever since. The character has easily dominated tournaments due to his many unavoidable combos and obnoxious answers to almost every situation — and it’s honestly not fun to watch.
I attended Supernova back when it was called Smash Con (just a few years ago) and I couldn’t make it through the Top 8. Melee was a masterclass of saltiness and long-time rivalries and incredible skill, but Ultimate was just random young players who made it to the Top 8 using Steve and Sonic. it was honestly unbearable. The crowd felt similarly, booing matches with those two characters because of their boring, frustrating playstyles.
I ended up leaving before the Grand Finals, annoyed with the constant crowd heckling and not very invested in which random teenage boy would win using a cheap character. I have better things to do, like play Soul Caliber II on GameCube apparently.
While Nintendo seems really adamant about not being involved in Smash esports, the company has somehow had the time (and audacity) to demand certain tournaments not ban Steve from the competition. Hey, we won’t give you any money — but mind if we control the tournament a bit without understanding any of the esports side of things? And no, we won’t fix any of your concerns with the broken character we made.
But Supernova was, once again, the target of the infuriated Smash community, leaving Odin unable to finish the tournament.
“I Realized I Don’t Have to Deal ith It”
While Melee was pretty stacked at Supernova 2025, Ultimate was sorta meh. I truthfully barely tuned in. Onin had made it pretty far and was expected to maybe even win the whole thing. However, Onin dropped out after beating Christian “Jahzz0” Ramsay, finally giving us something sort of interesting to talk about. Unfortunately, it was not anything positive. Per usual.
After beating Jahzz0, Onin couldn’t be found. They had apparently left the entire venue (they weren’t even hanging out at the vendors or sleeping in a beanbag chair, which I dared to do one year). Confused fans checked Onin’s X, which had been turned to private. However, it soon returned to public and a rant appeared.
“I am just not happy with how this community treats me,” said Onin, currently ranked 9th in the LumiRank leaderboard. “I realized I just… don’t have to deal with it. I am still very young and I took a lot of time to think about it and this just isn’t making me happy.”
Onin continued to tweet that they wanted to just focus on other stuff in their lives instead of dealing with the hate from the Smash community. It was clearly not the vibe they wanted after not being on stage for three years. What a fun return!
While some people reacted with support for the frustrated player, others felt that it was an extreme reaction to a crowd booing. Many argued that nobody was booing Onin — they were booing Steve. But Onin commented that “Steve hate” was just an excuse to get away with no respecting them as a person.
“‘Boo’ing is a part of competition’ is true, but also I feel like it would only make sense to go through with it if you make a living off said competition. Smash is awesome but I am NOWHERE close to making a living off this game,” Onin said. “So to put up with it is a lot less justified for me.”
So what does this mean for Smash? Sadly, nothing. Steve will continue to stall games in the Ultimate esports scene and win matches despite how boring and overpowered he is — and Smash players will continue to hate it. If Smash players won’t stop supporting pros for grooming or being a drunk weirdo on stream, what makes you think they’d stop booing because someone got sad?
In the past, Smash players have shown disdain for overpowered characters during tournaments and it led to really nothing of significance. Who could forget the time that two Bayonetta players ended up in the Grand Finals at Evo and the crowd booed them so much that the players decided to stall the game to troll the crowd even more?
Other fighting games would patch, ban, do whatever it is developers do. But not Smash. We’ll just keep booing Steve until the next Super Smash Bros. game comes out for the Nintendo Switch 2. Then we’ll just boo someone else.
Last Updated On: Aug 11, 2025 02:16 pm