The following anime characters are reduced to normal human stats and thrown into

[Sharpandpointies]

About this guy, Ippo - I've never read the series. Since it's a looooong series, surely he has faced off against people in stuff other than boxing-rules fights? Just checking.

[Nik Hasta]

About this guy, Ippo - I've never read the series. Since it's a looooong series, surely he has faced off against people in stuff other than boxing-rules fights? Just checking.

Nope. Hajime no Ippo is a boxing series about boxers. Like 98% of all conflict are in the ring settled under boxing rules.

There's been like... two street fights [kind of] and one character fought a bear. Ippo himself was involved in none of these engagements.

If anything, the series has tended towards more realism since it's inception. Rookie Ippo was doing stuff like one punching people so hard they full on flipped head over heels and other such wackiness but it's calmed down as time as gone on. There's a bit of the old "my special technique," knocking about but it's much less concerned with that these days.

It's... y'know... more about actual boxing.

UFC rules certainly tilt it toward people who have experience in that area. Even late in the game, back in Kengan Asura, Ohma was winning matches with bread-and-butter stuff like guillotine chokes on supremely skilled grapplers (him against the grappling prodigy whose name escapes me at the moment).

That would be Imai Cosmo.

[Sharpandpointies]

Nope. Hajime no Ippo is a boxing series about boxers. Like 95% of all conflict are in the ring settled under boxing rules.

There's been like... two street fights [kind of] and one character fought a bear. Ippo himself was involved in none of these engagements.

Yeah, I feel he's in big trouble here, then. He's up against some people who are not only highly skilled strikers, but highly skilled grapplers. Real world, the vast majority of the time that plays out poorly for the pure striker.

That would be Imai Cosmo.

Thank you. Embarrassing that I blanked on his name, dude is one of my favorite characters. ^_^

[Nik Hasta]

As a quick query, anyone know who the dude next to Naruto is supposed to be?

His design looks familiar and like... wait.. is that meant to be Tekken Chinmi? Did my boy make it into a mainstream anime versus match on accident?

... hold on...

*goes to check*

[Nik Hasta]

IT IS!

Hahaha! Man, I can't believe I didn't clock it was him until now, that's been bugging me all morning.

Oh man, he might be a dark horse in this. He's a classically trained martial artist, has tons of experience fighting differing styles including grapplers, has tons of experience of fighting with normal human stats so nerf won't effect him too much and he has some grappling feats here and there as well. He doesn't have as much experience of the specific UFC/MMA ruleset but he's definitely a contender.

He loses a couple of fancy chi tricks, his main fight-ender is the Tsuhaiken technique which like a palm strike that can transmit chi through objects, attacks internal organs and other such stuff, but the rest of the time he just relies on being a really good fighter.

[Sharpandpointies]

I vaguely recall reading some of that. Seems like we might have yet another person who stands a good chance.

[Nik Hasta]

I vaguely recall reading some of that. Seems like we might have yet another person who stands a good chance.

I really should do a respect thread for Chinmi at some point. He's a really fun character with like an acre of feats.

Trouble is locating scans of all the series. It's been running pretty consistently since 1983 but it's never taken off in the West in a way that means it gets regularly scanlated and the books are often out of print. :/

[BitVyper]

Yeah, I feel he's in big trouble here, then. He's up against some people who are not only highly skilled strikers, but highly skilled grapplers. Real world, the vast majority of the time that plays out poorly for the pure striker.

I mean, I think it depends on what translates here, because he's pretty much the only character (that I'm familiar with) who doesn't have 70% of his skills become largely irrelevant once he's stuck in a "normal" body. He may not be the best rounded fighter there, but he doesn't have a bunch of reflexes honed for flying and psychic duels.

[Sharpandpointies]

I mean, I think it depends on what translates here, because he's pretty much the only character (that I'm familiar with) who doesn't have 70% of his skills become largely irrelevant once he's stuck in a "normal" body. He may not be the best rounded fighter there, but he doesn't have a bunch of reflexes honed for flying and psychic duels.

Just to take Ohma as an example, Kengan Asura has a metric ton of fights that showcase some serious, real-world fighting techniques and fundamentals. Yes, those fights often get taken to exaggerated extremes, with weird special techniques or abilities thrown around, but we also get some pretty classic MMA stuff, including (as noted) Ohma doing stuff like subbing people with guillotine chokes (subbing someone considered in that manga as being one of the best technical grapplers, and often showcased as such - again, with albeit exaggerated but real-world techniques) and doing a lot of groundwork as well as fundamental striking. And defending himself quite well in a more pedestrian manner when he's up against someone against whom his special defenses don't work.

This does continue, to a lesser extent, in Kengan Omega.

For me, this is enough to give the win to Ohma over a boxer, all things being equal, pure strikers historically not doing terribly well against more-rounded fighters. Boxers demolish MMA dudes when the MMA dude steps into a boxing ring; the same thing tends to happen in the other direction when a pure striker with zero grappling experience gets into an MMA ring. That's not even including kicks, knees, elbows, which Ohma does use quite well and in a more real world fashion (ie, not all magic special techniques), all of which are completely unfamiliar to pure boxers.

On top of that, there's Ippo (164 cm, 57 kg) giving up a crapton of height and weight to someone like Ohma (182 cm, 85 kg). I don't feel that's necessary for Ohma to take the win here, mind; his more-rounded stuff should allow him to get in and take the boxer down. But if there's any doubt, one should also consider that the OP doesn't state that stats are equalized - just 'normal human' - and Ippo is quite small compared to Ohma.

Mileage, it may vary.

[Guy1]

Nope. Hajime no Ippo is a boxing series about boxers. Like 98% of all conflict are in the ring settled under boxing rules.

There's been like... two street fights [kind of] and one character fought a bear. Ippo himself was involved in none of these engagements.

If anything, the series has tended towards more realism since it's inception. Rookie Ippo was doing stuff like one punching people so hard they full on flipped head over heels and other such wackiness but it's calmed down as time as gone on. There's a bit of the old "my special technique," knocking about but it's much less concerned with that these days.

It's... y'know... more about actual boxing.

[T51R]

IIRC the Woli challenge for the Japan title was before Morikawa took the series in a much more technical direction. Woli is going to fight Riccardo soon, as the latter's tune-up match for Sendo. It will be interesting to see how he adjusts Woli to the new focus.

[hareluyafan1]

I'm not saying they'd be *useless* just that everything scales into the supernatural very quickly. Like Naruto's earliest stories have him using tons and tons of shadow clones right away, compared with say, Goku, who at least had a whole couple of adventures where everything he did was basically just punching and kicking, and even the kamehameha was something pulled out only occasionally.

I'm not saying Naruto can't throw a punch; he definitely has some technical skill that we see at various points. I'm saying that it's next to impossible to judge what he'd do in a "normal" body because he's basically never in a fight that doesn't involve a lot of supernatural hijinks that completely alter how fighting happens. Sasuke even moreso, since he's pretty much all in on the sharingan from the moment he has it, and that fundamentally alters the whole structure of his reflexes.

Cool.

I mean this is all even more hypothetical than our normal rumbles and there's a lot of unknowns that aren't being specified, but I think overall, Luffy, Buu, Naruto, and Sasuke are the weakest competitors here out of the ones I'm familiar with.

Yeah I'd say that's about right.

Like, people talk about Goku having experience when he was literally a child and are acting like the last literally 40 odd years of in-universe time of him having chi, beams, flight and teleportation as an integral part of his fighting style isn't going to be massive a culture shock for him to overcome in the ring.h.

That is very true. Also it raises the question of do these guys get any time to adjust to their altered states or are they just thrown in with no idea what's going on? Is it like, one minute Naruto's going about his day and the next there's a flash of light and he finds himself in the middle of a cage wearing just shorts and gloves, and some meathead is attacking him?

Off-topic, does anyone else really hate UFC/MMA? It's bland and tedious. See one match, you've seen them all. Besides a few exceptions everyone basically does the same boxing/Muay Thai/Brazillian jujitsu mix. There's no richness or variety.

"That's what works" you say. No, that's what's popular. ALL martial arts "work" if they're taught properly (i.e. against people who actively resist and don't just let you use a technique on them). Remember when everyone was saying Karate was "useless" because its front kicks were supposedly too weak to be any good in a fight? And then a guy got knocked out by a Karate front kick.

Unless something is done I foresee MMA leading to serious stagnation and metaphorical inbreeding in the martial arts world.

[Sharpandpointies]

That is very true. Also it raises the question of do these guys get any time to adjust to their altered states or are they just thrown in with no idea what's going on? Is it like, one minute Naruto's going about his day and the next there's a flash of light and he finds himself in the middle of a cage wearing just shorts and gloves, and some meathead is attacking him?

Standard idea is that no, they don't get time to retrain or anything, but we don't penalize people for suddenly popping in somewhere else in total surprise.

Off-topic, does anyone else really hate UFC/MMA? It's bland and tedious. See one match, you've seen them all. Besides a few exceptions everyone basically does the same boxing/Muay Thai/Brazillian jujitsu mix. There's no richness or variety.

I don't...hate it. I'm off the bloody nature of it, but when I do sit down and watch it, there's often something interesting from a technical aspect to it (normally in the grappling). Or I see something neat (like an undercard bout being won by a double-fake to a spinning backfist KO).

But the vast majority of people now use the specific 'MMA style' (for all they deny styles, MMA now has its own style, see below), yes.

"That's what works" you say. No, that's what's popular. ALL martial arts "work" if they're taught properly (i.e. against people who actively resist and don't just let you use a technique on them). Remember when everyone was saying Karate was "useless" because its front kicks were supposedly too weak to be any good in a fight? And then a guy got knocked out by a Karate front kick.

It's always less about the style and more about 'how that school trains'. It's fair to say that MMA/UFC DID change the martial arts world, in that it forced people to come face-to-face with their ideas about how effective their training was, and realize that it likely isn't great for actual fighting. It did remove or discredit some of the magical bullshit, though we still see that (and always will). And it proved that focusing on fundamentals with resistance was more important than trying to learn fancy techniques. All of this because it's far CLOSER to real fighting than pretty much everything else.

But like many other things in the martial arts world, it became myopic and ultra-reductionist: 'my way is the only way'. <-- hugely common perspective in martial arts, which is kinda sad.

Unless something is done I foresee MMA leading to serious stagnation and metaphorical inbreeding in the martial arts world.

Well, it's a sport. Period. It's closer to real fighting than any other codified sport, but it's still a sport, with specific rules in a specific venue. Hence, the development of an MMA 'style' that is hyper-focused on winning under THOSE rules, in THAT venue, and ignoring stuff that isn't directly applicable to winning under those circumstances. Which is fine in some ways, because it's far more effective in a general sense than a lot of stuff, owing to the kind of training and the fact that the venue itself is more close to real fighting than most - if not all, non-Dog-brothers kind of stuff - other venues.

But it's still a sport, and outside of its venue it can have problems...like all sports do (for one example of an MMA issue, dealing with weapons). And in MMA gyms that obsess about winning matches, nothing more, it will become more and more hyper-focused toward 'winning under the rules'.

But then, this has happened to pretty much every single 'style' out there, to some extent or another. Consequences of living in a society where people can't just walk around beating the crap out of each other to test their stuff.* ^_^ One can look back to certain periods in feudal Japan where similar stuff happened with swordsmanship, as another example, during times where the Shogun forbade dueling. Edit: Loss of realism in the teaching, but rather happily balanced out by less people dying horribly in duels, so...

* this is not a bad thing, from my perspective!

[Sharpandpointies]

There's always stuff like the Dog Brothers do for 'testing validity', but then...there's a very good reason why most of their long-term members are often either on hiatus or 'retired' from active training. Too many injuries.

It's a fine line between 'testing your stuff/training realistically' and 'training safely, but giving up some of that realism to do so'.

[Dark Soul # 7]

IIRC the Woli challenge for the Japan title was before Morikawa took the series in a much more technical direction. Woli is going to fight Riccardo soon, as the latter's tune-up match for Sendo. It will be interesting to see how he adjusts Woli to the new focus.

He is?! Shoot, I gotta catch up with Hajime No Ippo soon.