Why Huaxing won and is great at Melee

Huaxing's victory in his money match against me came down, I think, to three main points. The first point is that he's clearly stronger than me at spacing - this came through most strongly on the small stages, Yoshi's and Battlefield. On these stages, he landed a lot of tippers and strong fsmashes after getting a good positioning out of neutral, and I whiffed a lot of punishes. Neutral game was painful for me in general on these stages because of his superiority in spacing, and the games on these small stages were quick and ended in his favor. The small stages weren't the only problem for me, though.

On larger stages, like my counterpicks Dream Land and Pokemon Stadium, the games were a bit easier for me because I could escape combos onto high platforms, but I still couldn't find wins. I think there were two reasons for that: the first is that Huaxing's offstage game is a lot stronger than mine. I was too afraid to challenge him offstage even when the situation favored me, and he got a lot of free recoveries because of that, while I had a much harder time getting on stage. The other reason is that I'm impatient when either of us gets launched high, and Huaxing isn't - so when I get launched, Huaxing usually got a juggle, while when I launched Huaxing, I'd go for an upair and miss, letting him get to the ground before me.

The third main point is that Huaxing is a lot stronger under pressure than I am. He does play a little worse under pressure, but it's limited to being slightly overcautious, which is very common in Melee players. For me, pressure exacerbates my bad habits and I don't mix options up nearly enough, and Huaxing is very capable of punishing these mistakes.