Star Fox vs Star Wolf matchups, how and why
Fox McCloud > Wolf O'Donnell
Wolf is an A Tier pilot, his problem is just that he's the Char in an Amuro/Char relationship and he doesn't want to admit it. Fox's primary weakness at the beginning of their rivalry is his lack of seasoning, and Wolf has to lean on that hard to stay in the fight; taunting him about his dad and ambushing him mid-battle when he already has problems to deal with.
Falco Lombardi > Leon Powalski
Falco/Leon is a tricky matchup because Falco is the better pilot on paper, but not so much better than Leon that he makes it a cakewalk. He actually has to fly hard, which is something Falco doesn't have to do a lot. He also has one huge problem: he's a hothead and Leon is a troll. Falco can be working on getting Leon all boxed up when Leon hits him with an open broadcast saying "I think I'll torture you for awhile." and the sheer idea of this lizard talking smack gets Falco seeing red and wait where did he go HOW DID HE GET ON MY TAIL-
Pigma Dengar > Peppy Hare
Peppy my man it is not a good day for you. Peppy is smarter than Pigma in a lot of ways, but as a pilot, he's a great strategist. He's also older than Pigma (I think of Peppy as older than either of his former wingmates) so that's starting to bite him in the ass as time goes on. Pigma beats Peppy like a drum in a one-on-one matchup so Peppy has to play defense, use terrain flying and try to lead Pigma into a teammate's crosshairs because Pigma's grudge against his former wingman can blind him to the wider picture.
Andrew Oikonny > Slippy Toad
In contrast to official Nintendo statements I don't think of either of them as being that bad as pilots - they can fly a Wolfen and Arwing respectively without killing themselves after all, which speaks to some level of skill. The problem is they're both cruiserweights competing alongside superheavyweights. Both of them have technical skills but they're also both nepo babies (the big difference is that Slippy admits it while Andrew refuses to acknowledge fault) but the end result is Andrew's role in a furball is to bully Slippy until Fox or Falco can bail him out, because if he ever flew against anyone else in this kind of fight he'd get shredded.
