Heckin’ martial arts battle!

Ink editor’s fantasy bouts reveal the KOTC

By Osei helper | Manor Ink

For a long time I’ve watched different martial arts films and have grown to recognize certain actors. What if the characters that these actors portray fought each other in a tournament to the death? Well, that is exactly what I am going to discuss here: a hypothetical tournament to the death between eight protagonists from eight different martial arts movies.

First, I am going to lay out some ground rules. When choosing the characters, I limited myself to one per movie, as well as one character per actor. I also made sure to choose one of each actor’s most popular films. The films also had to be fighting movies (of course) where the actors were the main character.

As for the tournament itself, to keep things fair and interesting, I randomized the order that the characters will fight in. Each fight will be completely unarmed and to the death. There will also be no damage carry-over from fight to fight. Also, I will take the fighters in their prime. With all of that out of the way, let’s meet our contestants in order of their matches.

Our first contestant is the character Ting from “Ong-Bak,” played by Tony Jaa. The movie story follows our protagonist as he travels to retrieve the stolen head of his village’s deity, Ong-Bak. He will be facing Ito from “The Night Comes for Us,” played by Joe Taslim. He is an elite triad gone rogue after he spares a little girl and turns on his syndicate for massacring the girl’s village. Ito is now on the run from the entire syndicate while trying to get the girl to safety.

Our third contestant is Bone from “Blood and Bone,” played by Michael Jai White. After being released from prison, Bone enters illegal street fights in an effort to find the man that ordered the death of his friend in prison. He will be up against Rama from “The Raid,” played by Iko Uwais. Rama is a rookie cop, part of a police raid on an apartment complex run by a drug lord.

Our fifth contestant is Boyka from the “Undisputed” series, played by Scott Adkins. Boyka is a Russian prisoner competing in illegal prison fights in order to prove himself as a fighter. He is up against Chen from “Man of Tai Chi,” played by Tiger Chen. That film follows the protagonist through fights to raise money to repair his master’s temple before it gets demolished.

Our seventh contestant is Huo from “Fearless,” played by Jet Li. Huo is a Chinese martial arts master fighting against other world powers in order to defend the honor of China. He will be going up against our final contestant, Ip Man from the “Ip Man” series, played by Donnie Yen. Ip Man is a master of the martial art known as “wing chun” and uses that technique to defend his family, friends and innocents all throughout the movie series.

Let the fights begin!

The first round

Now that you have a brief understanding of each fighter, it’s finally time to kick off the tournament, starting with Ting vs. Ito. In his film, Ito shows he has the ability to easily kill and maim multiple gang members armed with weapons, all at once. While Ting has this ability, it can be reasonably assumed that the people Ito faces are at a higher level of combat ability.

The best comparisons that can be made are Ting’s fight against Saming, a crime lord lieutenant, and Ito’s fight against Arian, a member of an old gang that Ito was in. The first big difference here is the amount of punishment that each man can take. It is abundantly clear that Ito has the edge in durability. Throughout the duration of the movie, he is stabbed, shot, beaten and even electrocuted twice. This is all before his fight with Arian in which he is beaten awfully and stabbed multiple times, yet still manages to win. Ting has a few good moments of durability, taking multiple objects being broken over him without flinching at all. His best demonstration of durability is probably his being able to survive a surprise dropkick from Saming.

Looking at everything, I’m giving Ito the win. In his fight, he is outskilled by Arian, but manages to triumph because of his relentlessness. Ting struggled against Saming, a fighter of lesser skill, because of the man’s strength and ferocity. I think Ito and Ting are relatively equal in fighting skill, but Ito’s durability and size give him the advantage. Ito also displays more grappling ability, so he could hypothetically take the fight to the ground if he finds himself being outstruck.

Ito moves on.

Round two

Our next fight is Bone against Rama. This is a tough one. Similar to Ito, Rama has a clear endurance advantage over the course of his two movies. In the first, he had to fight off multiple tenants of the drug lord’s apartment complex, as well as an extremely skilled fighter. In his second movie, he defeats numerous gangsters and three high-level assassins over several days without rest. He sustains brutal injuries, but is able to keep going.

Bone, on the other hand, is hard to gauge, because he never had a tough battle. His most difficult bout was a fight against the champion of the international underground fighting scene, and he still mid-diffed (a medium-difficulty win) the champion. I’ll have to really dig into their skills to determine a winner.

In the speed and durability, Rama has the advantage. But in size and strength, it goes to Bone. Both characters are seen taking out high-level fighters, but Rama goes up barehanded against considerably tougher opponents wielding weapons. Both men are able to zero in on opponents’ weaknesses, and can throw multiple combinations.

After reviewing everything, I think I’m going to give Rama the win, for a couple of reasons. First is his durability. Based on what Rama has shown us, he should be able to take any attack Bone throws at him. His exceptional reflexes and speed will also help. Second is his fighting range. Rama excels at close range, and this will neutralize much of Bone’s power. Both fighters show similar levels of grappling, so that shouldn’t be much of a factor, especially considering both favor striking. Lastly, Rama is in a far more serious situation in his movies, and his quick thinking, impressive in general, is elevated to a whole new level under those circumstances. His biggest challenge will be Bone’s power, size, and his surprisingly quick footwork, but I think Rama will win in the end.

Rama moves on.

Round three

The next battle is between Boyka and Chen. Now, this one is especially difficult, but not for the usual factors. Normally, this would be a sound win for Boyka. He has the build advantage and striking speed similar to Chen with superior footwork. He also has a greater level of durability and is a better grappler with a higher fight IQ than Chen. So why is this match a difficult one? Because Chen has a “chi blast.” In the final fight scene of his movie, Chen unleashes a chi blast that takes down his opponent completely with severe internal bleeding.

Not much is known about this move, except that Chen’s master used it on him and it affected him similarly. If this is a fight to the death, and Chen can use the chi blast as often as he wants, it makes the fight a great deal harder for Boyka. But Boyka is an evasive combatant, so chances are it won’t be easy for Chen to land the blast. I see this fight going a few ways. One is that Boyka is able to take out Chen by keeping the pressure on him so he won’t have time to use the blast. If he can get off the blast, Boyka might be able to tank it and still win the fight by keeping the pressure up. But if Boyka isn’t able to recover in time, Chen will be able to launch the blast multiple times until Boyka is dead.

Given everything I know about the fighters and how they fight, I’m going to give the win to Boyka. He clearly outmatches Chen despite the chi blast move that Chen has only pulled off once.

Boyka moves on.

Round four

Out final battle of the first round is Huo against Ip Man. Both fighters hail from China and practice forms of kung fu, so this fight should be a good one. Looking at the caliber of other fighters both have gone up against, as well as their attributes (speed, strength, durability), this match is a pretty solid win for Ip Man. Both of them fought karate black belts. We can’t scale them perfectly to each other, but they should be somewhat equal, considering their fighting abilities – Ip Man battled an army general, Miura, who ranked above numerous black belts and was clearly superior to them, and Huo faced off against the Japanese karate champion of the time, Tanaka. Ip Man completely wiped the floor with the General Miura, while Huo struggled against Tanaka. Granted, Huo was poisoned at the time, but he was still holding his own.

Ip Man was able to also hold his own against Frank, a character played by Mike Tyson – who was essentially just Mike Tyson – as well as defeating a British boxing champion. Huo also beat another boxer, but an old timer who showed no semblance of technical skill. Ip Man simply has too much speed and too many successes with high-tier fighters to make this a match requiring more deliberating.

Ip Man moves on.

Semifinal rounds

It is now time for the semifinals. The first match is Ito vs. Rama. This is especially interesting because the actor who played Rama in “The Raid,” Iko Uwais, also played Arian in “The Night Comes for Us,” so we can use that fight for reference in this match. Both characters have a comparable level of durability, so for whoever wins this will be an extremely high-difficulty fight. I’m going to give the victory to Rama. While Ito is the more durable and ruthless fighter, I think Rama’s skill would allow him to eventually take down Ito. It would definitely be a brutal showdown that could go either way, but Rama wins six out of ten.

Rama advances to the finals.

For the other semifinal match, it’s Boyka facing off against Ip Man. This won’t be super easy, but it’s definitely not Boyka’s most difficult win. Ip Man only has superior striking speed and skill as his advantage. Boyka is bigger, stronger, more powerful, possessive of superior footwork, has far superior grappling ability and is more durable. It’s sad to say, because I love Ip Man, but he doesn’t really stand much of a chance once you factor in grappling.

Boyka advances to the finals.

The final match

The final has finally arrived! It has been a long and tough tournament, but we’ve finally reached our end. On one side, we have Rama who was able to get through two extremely tough fighters, Bone and Ito. On the other side, we have Boyka who was able to narrowly beat Chen and take out the legendary Ip Man. Who will win?

If you’ve followed this tournament closely, you should be able to tell, but lets go through the fighter’s advantages over each other. Boyka has a superior build. He also has the edge in grappling and probably in power too. Rama’s advantage lies in his overall striking skill as well as speed and ferocity. He also beats Boyka in durability. Considering everything I have stated beforehand and witnessed in both fighters, the victor of the eight-man death tournament is Rama.

His striking skill and inhuman durability will just be too much for Boyka. Rama also has enough grappling skill to fend off Boyka.

Rama wins!

If you managed to read through all of this, I applaud you and thank you. It has truly been a pleasure to write, and I highly suggest you check out all of the actors mentioned and their movies.

Fight clips from the movies mentioned in this article can all be found online at youtube.com.