“Sorry for losing my temper,” top Super Smash Bros. Melee pro Juan “Hungrybox” Debiedma wrote on Twitter after the weekend’s Pound 2019 tournament in Maryland. He had just fought his way out of the loser’s bracket and ultimately took it all in the grand finals. Debiedma had every reason to be happy—except in the crustacean department.
“Someone threw a fucking raw crab at me,” he tweeted. “Barely missed my head. What the fuck man.”
A video recorded by a fan shows Debiedma reaching to shake the hand of his opponent, Joseph “Mango” Marquez, and then suddenly turning around toward the ground. With a big thunk, a dead crab had landed there. He picks it up and, facing the crowd, furiously demands, “Who threw this at me?”
Commentator Phil “EE” Visu said in a tweet that organizers “caught the tool who tossed it, he def got kicked out.”
Debiedma is the top Super Smash Bros. Melee player in the world, but despite that, he gets a lot of hate from the game’s fans. A big portion of that is due to his fighter of choice: the Pokémon Jigglypuff. In a 2018 essay for The Players’ Tribune, he attempted to explain why:
Alright, so here’s why people hate Jigglypuff. Super Smash Bros. Melee is a game about aggression. You’ll watch Fox slide around the floor and combo opponents at incredible speeds. You’ll see Sheik make impossible maneuvers around platforms. You’ll see Falcon land these ridiculous, arena-deafening combos before launching his opponent into the stratosphere. Jigglypuff, though? Jigglypuff is different. For starters, she’s defensive. She lets the game come to her. She baits and she punishes. She also has a move called “Rest” that puts other characters in stasis, a mechanic that has tilted more Melee players than any other. All of it combines to make Jigglypuff pretty unpopular. Some would even say a cheesy character. And you know what? That’s exactly why I fell in love with her.
Debiedma did not respond to Kotaku’s request for comment by press time, but in a tweet, he did thank his fans for their support.