User:Cookies and Creme/Ultimate GOAT
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Similar to Melee, there have been debates on who should be considered Ultimate's greatest player.
For most of competitive play, MkLeo was considered the undisputed greatest Ultimate player of all time due to his longtime dominance on the scene, ranking first from 2019 to 2022 (though retroactive algorithms have put Sparg0 ahead in 2022[1]) and having a streak of finishing top 2 at every offline event he attended from MomoCon 2019 to the Smash World Tour 2021 Championships in 2021. He also possessed the most overall major wins and supermajor wins out of any player for the longest time, with the former only being overtaken on January 19th, 2025, after Miya won Sumabato SP 55. Finally, a list released by SchuStats in 2025 algorithmically ranked the all-time top 10,000 players in Ultimate's history up to that point and ranked MkLeo first with 57.43 points, almost 17 points ahead of the runner-up.
However, especially following Kagaribi 15 and EazyFreezie's personal all-time ranking,[2], several players have also argued that acola should be considered the greatest Ultimate player of all time. These players noted that acola had a similar period of dominance to MkLeo, having only finished below 9th at 3 ranked events and being considered a top 4 player ever since his debut on the scene in 2022, including being ranked 1st in 2023, the first half of 2024 (as well as 2024 overall, though the season did not have a publicly-released full-year ranking), and the first half of 2026. Conversely, MkLeo's slump in the mid-2020s, including a season where he wasn't even ranked in the top 20, made MkLeo's overall career look less consistent compared to acola. Finally, acola not only had more major wins than MkLeo, but also was the only player to match MkLeo's supermajor record, achieving that after winning Riptide 2026.
On the other hand, several other players maintain MkLeo's position as the game's greatest, arguing that his longevity on the scene gave him an advantage over acola, especially as he was still a top 20 player for most of his career, even in spite of his slump. In addition, they argue that the height of MkLeo's career — primarily his Grand Finals streak and him having the longest streak of top 8 major finishes — still outweighed acola's. Still others question whether acola deserved to have the title in spite of the statistics, arguing that MkLeo is a better player than acola and showed greater proficiency with the roster by winning majors with 6 different characters, as opposed to acola playing and winning with Steve, a character often considered broken, for most of his career.
