Disclaimer: The BBR has nothing to do with this, it’s the Unity collective AKA the BBR-RC. Completely separate rooms. The BBR has not voted on any rules since Unity was installed.
As an individual I’ve been following and participated in Meta Knight debates since the start and it’s gotten to a point where I’m pretty sick of the whole discussion. It has harmed the American community more than any character itself ever could and I don’t think it will ever end. People drag in all sorts of arguments and personal attacks (both ways!), but to me it seems rather simple: Meta Knight is perceived as winning too much in the United States. In Europe and Japan he functions pretty much like every other top tier would, even if he is acknowledged as the best character. There are some key differences in stages and perhaps mentality, but I generally find peope very unwilling to explore the continental discrepancies in the first place.
Meta Knight makes about half the total money earned in American tournaments and has several top players consistently performing with him, most notably Mew2King, which has been documented rather thoroughly. Note that this in itself doesn’t mean anything, the data doesn’t make statements on its own. Other than Tuen I don’t think anyone has ever even bothered to do a proper statistical analysis, nor is there material to compare it to. Melee was dominated by a single character too for several long periods, but we didn’t keep monetary records and I don’t think other fighting games scenes do. What it comes down to is that there really isn’t any objective justification for a ban other than that the scene can collectively determine a cutoff point where they think it’s enough, provided TOs are willing to run with it. That’s about as legitimate as it can get and I’m not really against a (super) majority rule as long as people leave their salt at the door. I’ve always acknowledged that MK is very dominant in the US, but I simply don’t agree with most other arguments that get thrown into the mix. There’s nothing “factual” about character diversity and dominance as far as cutoff points are concerned, it all comes down to the values of players.
What I do know is that players like M2K, Ally and Anti deserve their wins and rely on more than their character to be as consistently good as they are. I hope that people can at least have that much respect, even if their character does get banned.
inb4europeknowsnothing