Ranked Season 33 ran from August 1-31, 2025, with 4x Online Competition Champion Joji Kaieda taking 1st place in the Double Battle division for the 6th time! They attributed their victory to a team featuring Koraidon and Calyrex Ice Rider, a pairing of Restricted Pokémon that reached an incredible Top 4 finish at the recent 2025 World Championships.
This was the final season to use the Regulation Set I ruleset in the 2025 Championship Series, allowing the use of Paradox Pokemon, Legendary Pokemon, along with a choice of two Restricted Special Pokemon per team. All teams and rental codes shown below can additionally be used in online Ranked Battles while Regulation Set J is running from September 1, 2025, to January 4, 2026. Read below for details on the most used Pokémon, Restricted Pokémon, and the team that won Joji Kaieda their impressive 1st place finish!
Standings
# | Trainer | Pokémon | Rental |
1st | Joji Kaieda | ||
2nd | Juan Manuel Odriozola | ||
3rd | アリス | — | |
4th | "Indigo" | — | |
5th | アインハルト | — | |
6th | "Indigo" | — | |
7th | "Seita" | — | |
8th | アコビ | ||
9th | スカーレット | — | |
10th | "Seita" | — | |
11th | バイオレット | — | |
12th | かおる | ||
13th | ちゃっぴー | — | |
14th | "Candy" | ||
15th | たきあ | — | |
16th | マーレラン | — |
Joji Kaieda's Winning Team
As mentioned above, both this team and Juan Manuel Odriozola's 2nd place team are the same as Hirofumi Kimura's Top 4 team at the 2025 World Championships, featuring the same six Pokémon with the same moves, abilities, held items, and Tera Types. Kimura lost in the semifinals to Giovanni Cischke, who went on to become the World Champion.In an official post, Joji Kaieda discusses how their team at the 2025 North America Internationals featuring Calyrex Ice Rider and Kyogre, which resulted in an impressive record of 9 wins and 3 losses, struggled against opposing Urshifu Rapid Strike and Grass-type Pokémon and Grass-Tera Pokémon. This led them to focus on the pairing of Calyrex Ice Rider and Koraidon, with the latter able to deal with Grass-type Pokémon with its powerful Fire-type attacks and greatly reduce Urshifu's damage with its signature ability Orichalcum Pulse setting up the harsh sunlight. Calyrex Ice Rider also helps the team to deal with opposing Koraidon.
Top Pokémon
Unsurprisingly, the usage stats are once again dominated by Incineroar, Urshifu, and Rillaboom.More notably, Chien-Pao, Flutter Mane, and Amoonguss all see increases in usage—likely following their impressive performances at the 2025 World Championships. Despite Smeargle similarly reaching the Top 4, it instead sees a drop in usage, possibly due to Amoonguss and Brute Bonnet picking up in popularity as the main Spore users of the format. Grimmsnarl sees a drop in usage too, effectively highlighting how the Regulation I format changed as time went on, starting with bulkier teams featuring Grimmsnarl setting up Light Screen and Reflect, but ending with more offensive teams featuring Koraidon, Chi-Yu, and Flutter Mane.
# | Pokémon | | # | Pokémon | ||
1st | Incineroar | 7th | ▲ Flutter Mane | |||
2nd | Urshifu (Rapid Strike) | 8th | Raging Bolt | |||
3rd | Rillaboom | 9th | ▲ Amoonguss | |||
4th | Whimsicott | 10th | ▲ Ogerpon (All Forms) | |||
5th | ▲ Chien-Pao | 11th | ▼ Smeargle | |||
6th | ▼ Tornadus (Incarnate) | 12th | ▼ Grimmsnarl | |||
Top Restricted Pokémon
Once again, the top Restricted Pokémon are fairly similar every month. Miraidon and Calyrex Shadow Rider take the top spots, and Zamazenta and Calyrex Ice Rider follow close behind.Notably, Zamazenta managed to see more usage in Ranked Season 33, finally beating out Calyrex Ice Rider. Koraidon also, unsurprisingly, sees a dramatic increase in usage thanks to its incredible 1st and 2nd place finishes at the 2025 World Championships.
# | Pokémon | | # | Pokémon | ||
1st | Miraidon | 5th | ▲ Koraidon | |||
2nd | Calyrex (Shadow Rider) | 6th | ▼ Kyogre | |||
3rd | ▲ Zamazenta | 7th | ▼ Lunala | |||
4th | ▼ Calyrex (Ice Rider) | 8th | Groudon | |||
