A Smash centered Direct could just be hosted by Sakurai, but I dunno how "up to it" he'd be. You gotta remember, Iwata and Sakurai worked side by side for a long time at HAL Labs before Iwata became president of Nintendo. Iwata was right there working as producer on Kirby and Smash, Sakurai's two biggest creations at HAL.

Given all the stress Sakurai's had to work with these past few years with reviving the Kid Icarus IP and then creating the first Smash game for both HD and a portable system, the death of a very close friend probably only made his stress worse.

yeah about that https://twitter.com/MyNintendoNews/status/659290663696007169