A high-stakes Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament match ended in unprecedented fashion when top Canadian player Kurtis “Moky” Pratt was eliminated after his character fell through a bugged section of the Pokémon Stadium stage. The mishap occurred during the stage’s Fire transformation, when Moky’s Fox character clipped through part of a tree and plummeted to an unexpected defeat.
The bug that claimed Moky’s tournament life is rare but well-documented within the Melee community. It specifically affects the Fire transformation of Pokémon Stadium, where certain movements near the trees can trigger collision detection failures.
According to viewers, Moky was spamming wavedash—a sliding movement technique—in the exact location known to occasionally trigger the glitch.
“Watching the set live, the ‘oh no he’s gonna clip through the tree’ thought happened like 20 seconds before this when he started camping in that exact spot,” one tournament viewer noted. “Spamming wavedash like he did is specifically how you trigger it too.”
This situation is particularly noteworthy because tournament organizers continue to use the original, unmodified version of Pokémon Stadium despite knowing its flaws. This decision isn’t made lightly—it’s primarily driven by legal concerns.
Nintendo has a history of sending cease-and-desist orders to tournaments using modified game builds. Even though a “Frozen Stadium” modification exists that would disable these problematic transformations, major tournaments typically avoid using such mods to prevent potential shutdown by Nintendo.
The competitive Melee ruleset only regularly uses six stages out of the game’s 29 total, with Pokémon Stadium valued for its neutral design in its base form. Most professional players are keenly aware of the stage’s quirks and play cautiously during risky transformations, but these rare bugs can still emerge under tournament pressure.
For Moky, a respected Fox main with Summit championship credentials, this unfortunate elimination has been described by community members as possibly “the worst ending to a supermajor in Melee history,” highlighting the unique challenges of competing in a 20+ year-old game at the highest level.
