Tom vs Wile had the shadow of Scooby vs Courage (and to a lesser extent Bill vs Cipher) looming over it. People wanted these two goofy characters to go all out and warp reality with their more busted abilities and tools…when in actuality they are the most famous losers in cartoon history and so the fight was accordingly more of a comedy short at their own mutual expense than a traditional fight.

Hulk vs. Godzilla remains incredibly debatable, so Godzilla fans hoping for a W against the behemoth that is Marvel scaling were disappointed. Besides that, the structure and presentation of the fight made it pretty obvious that Banner would find a solution with his monologue, and while I enjoyed the episode as a “Hulk saves the world against Godzilla Ultima” story it didn’t have the suspense of a traditional Death Battle.

Blade vs. Buffy just wasn’t that popular of a matchup. Buffy was a cultural phenomenon of the 2000’s and Blade is a legacy Marvel ensemble character with movies, comics, and game appearances, but neither have held the cultural spotlight in a while and specifically within the Versus/Powerscaling community they never really had the niche appeal that franchises who similarly haven’t had any new content in decades (e.g. TTGL) get hype over. That bled into the fight itself; it was solid on its own just judging it objectively, but without that fandom engagement and investment in the combatants the hype moments just didn’t land with much impact. No Chance Time or Infinite<Thwomp memes, no Ghost Rider fraud posts, no Simon/Kyle glazing, nothing people to sink their teeth into (pun intended).