>>56421298I 100% expected Ash to lose to Tobias when I saw he was undefeated off just Darkrai.
Against Alain I had hope that they would let Ash win because the budget picked up a lot, Ash got a custom bond power-up, and I figured they wanted to redeem Ash after the blunder that was Best Wishes (Ash losing to a 5 mon team after traveling 4 regions prior was so dumb). When I saw Greninja lost, I was like nope, that's it. And then the visuals looked like dogshit for SM which likely killed a major portion of watchers in combination with that XY fakeout, which I imagine was why they felt it was time to retire Ash since his stock was dropping way too much.
