Out of all the top players in the PGR, none have been more critical of the Bayonetta meta than Jason "ANTi" Bates. The Mario main went on a now deleted anti-Bayo Twitter rant after watching Salem take Dreamhack Atlanta, and declared Smash 4 and his former main Mario "dead." Maybe the tweets were deleted because he was in a dark place and regretted popping off on Twitter, or maybe he was just screwing around (which he does do on Twitter) and people took him too seriously.
A week later, ANTi won GOML 2017 with that same Mario play he declared "dead," by defeating Larry Lurr with an insane finish right around the 12:13 mark:
DESPITE ALL THIS, ANTi took to Twitter last night to make the following annoucement:
Every Smash game I played I always played the best char. PM Mewtwo, Brawl MK, Melee Fox. Time to do it in Smash 4 pic.twitter.com/unbUGHQCQq
— IMT ANTi (@Anti) August 9, 2017
Now obviously, this isn't an overnight thing as he updated fans this morning on the process, although it does really seem like he's going to try and main Bayo in 2017:
On August 15 + 16 im gonna stream about 10-15 hours of me trying to learn Bayonetta. It will be fun 😎
— IMT ANTi (@Anti) August 9, 2017
I'm still holding out hope it's a goof as I find Bayo play far less entertaining than ANTi's legendary Mario play, but when money's on the line I guess I can respect the hustle. How many other pros will switch to Bayo before the year is up?