Headscratchers / The Legend Of Korra Pro Bending

Headscratchers pertaining to the sport of pro-bending in The Legend of Korra. Return to the index for more.

How does Pro-Bending work in terms of how much of an element you can use?

• It seems like Earth has an inherent disadvantage, where the Bender can only pick up one or two discs at a time. Waterbenders could pull the entire channel of water to attack, like Korra does when she knocks that guy over the side. Fire, as in the previous series, is based entirely in the strength of the Bender, so they could theoretically be a dozen times stronger than the Earthbenders with their single discs.
  • Waterbenders and firebenders can only use short bursts, no more than a second or so, and waterbenders are limited to the channel in their zone. Korra broke the rules in more ways than one with that first shot. Earthbenders, by comparison, can use as many of those little discs as they want.
  • Where is is stated that they can only use small bursts? Mako does some pretty significant hits in his 3 on 1 moment. Definitely more fire than the other teams Firebender was using, at least. Also, Korra only pulls from her channel. It's just a lot of water. Much more mass than those discs.
  • The official rules of pro-bending state that bursts longer than 1 second can't be used.
  • There is a limited number of the discs, though, meaning they can use them as frequently as they want, provided they don't run out.
  • There could be hundreds of those discs in the reserve; it's unlikely that they ever run out in the course of a single match.
  • Correct me if I'm wrong because I can't check right now, but didn't the one of Fire Ferret's opponents run out of discs during the second episode? I think there's a set number of discs available per game or round.
  • Are you referring to the "out of juice" comment? I think that this rather meant that they basically got tired, not that they don't have any materials any more.
  • Addendum to the disc comment as well, it looks like during the demonstrations of the rules and explanation of game mechanics vid put up, its stated that there's a loading mechanism not unlike a disc launcher gun loaded a plenty of the discs. It didn't specify how many but sounded like there was probably more than enough to not worry about it going dry.
  • There's also the idea that highlighting these differences is not so much a glitch as it is a feature, a deliberate showcasing of the tactical differences and limitations each bender has for the benefit of the game.
  • I'd say that all the elements have inherent disadvantages. For instance, the natural instinct for a water bender would be to throw a curving torrent of water that knocks an opponent sideways (probably why Korra tried this first). But the rules say that they can only knock opponents off the back of the ring, forcing water benders to concentrate on straight and direct attacks. Earth benders are limited to moving small disks of earth at a time, whereas in the real world the entire landscape is their weapon. And of course fire benders can only throw a small amount of fire at a time (probably for safety reasons, i.e. to prevent collateral damage), which goes completely against the normal fire bending orthodoxy of overwhelming force. Even air benders would seem to be at a disadvantage. Recall that Aang's typical air bending tactics involved a lot of movement, typically making long circular dodges on currents of wind. But in pro-bending the competitors are confined to a small field which limits their range of movement.
  • Additionally, the game emphasizes the ability to push one's opponents around and off the ring. Fire doesn't provide as much knockback as earth and water. It appears that the availability of each element is inversely proportional to how dense/solid it is
  • Officially, the fire- and water-benders can't use more than a second or two of their attack-types. They are limited in size of attack to a degree [blast of water, medium-sized stone slab] but not supply [maybe supply a bit, but the size of the stadium and the mechanisms of the slots mean running out is hard to do]. That is the heart of the sport - efficiency of technique, efficiency of supplies, restraint, and teamwork. It's like a minimally-spiritual Air-bending training session for other benders.
  • In the episode where the president is almost captured, Bolin pulls up the whole stack of discs and it's stated that that would be an illegal move if it was a pro-bending match.

Why is Korra allowed in pro-bending?

• Call me crazy but just for fairness sake I simply wouldn't allow the most powerful being in the universe to play a game that's based on your physical abilities. Just like I wouldn't allow Flash to enter the Olympics. While we're on the subject we're supposed to believe that a winning team with the Avatar on it had to luck into Henry Ford's expy to get sponsored? Unless the buy in is absurdly high I can't believe they don't have enough fans who'd pitch in to make something as stupid as the Team Avatar being to broke to go to the championship.
  • The chief advantage Korra would bring is that she can bend all elements- which she's explicitly not allowed to do (I'm assuming that a sport is not going to trigger the Avatar State, and if something bad enough does happen to trigger it, then everyone probably has much bigger things to worry about than the game). Restricted to just waterbending, she's just a particularly talented bender, balanced out by her inexperience with the sport. As for the funds, the Fire Ferrets don't seem to have gone public with their financial troubles, and somehow riding on Korra's Avatar reputation to get cash seems out of character for Mako anyway.
  • Well the last time an Avatar was kicked out of playing a sport he liked simply because he was the Avatar, he got depressed, ran away with his bison, and ended up frozen for 100 years while the world burned. Am I the only one who sees the irony is this question?
  • That's not why he ran away; they wanted to separate him from Monk Gyatso. Also, it was a bunch of 8-year-olds that wouldn't let him play the children's game that he invented; that just lead to him resenting being the avatar. Obviously, the adults on the regulation committee are much better at rationalizing.
  • The Flash (Jay Garrick) did enter the Olympics once, I believe.
  • The first answer has it nailed. Simply being the Avatar does not, by itself, guarantee exceptional mastery of any one element. Recall that by the end of ATLA, Aang was still in the process of mastering his non-native elements and didn't surpass his teachers (Katara, Toph and Zuko). Furthermore, the rules of the game are explicitly restricted even within the designated elements to specific regulated moves (water and fire blasts are limited to one second, earthbenders can only use the discs, etc.), which means that the Avatar's primary advantage over other benders — versatility — is not of much use. As for the Avatar State, going by common sense, it would likely result in punishment. The number one unwritten rule of almost all games is "if it's not explicitly in the rules, then it's not allowed". The Avatar State qualifies for "not being in the rules", just like bending an element other than the player's designated one, or knocking an opponent off the side of the ring.
  • There doesn't seem to be a formalized method for fans to donate directly to a team's pocketbook, nor does merchandising seem to be a common thing. Pro bending is still a young sport, and a lot of the structures that support a typical sport's business model don't seem to be in place yet. Mako and Bolin probably COULD have petitioned their fans directly for funds, but that would have required a media savvy and entrepreneurial spirit that neither had demonstrated at that point (although media-savvy second-season mover-star Bolin probably would have thought of it).
    Once the Avatar joined the team, presumably corporate sponsors would have lined up around the block, and Sato was simply the first one to get to them. Economy of storytelling makes that more interesting to watch than Mako choosing between a half-dozen offers. (One imagines that Varrick probably would have been interested if he'd been around in the first season, but maybe he was at the South Pole during the events of the first.)
• Have you MET Korra? Are you going to be the one to tell her she can't do something? Because personally I like having teeth too much to do that.

How do you get away with cheating for as long as the Wolf Bats did when the media isn't in on the scam?

• The radio announcer could see that the refs weren't calling blatant fouls against the Wolf Bats: Offsides (okay, even the announcer missed that one, but you can clearly see one of them stepped over the center line in order to attack), Icing, Hosing, Illegal Headshots, all broadcast over the radio. The announcer may as well have said, "This match is rigged," to the entire city. People bet large sums of money on sports, and they would be livid to find out they've been cheated. The ticket sales and attendance would suffer because people would stop taking the sport seriously (think Pro-Wrestling). How do you keep this scam going for four years?
  • Considering the announcer was blatant about the wolfbats cheating, but didn't reference earlier cheating and seemed genuinely surprised by the referee allowing it, its probable that they don't actually cheat as their regular strategy. It could be that they were scared of the avatar or wanted to enact some revenge for Korra scaring them with Naga.
  • They may have used a strategy of testing the referee's tolerance in their matches. Note how they started with small offenses. If in previous matches they get called on these earlier attempts, they dial it back, but if they don't get called they escalate until they do get called. It may well be possible that all experienced pro-bending teams do it, since every referee is probably different and has a different level of tolerance of borderline calls, and the matches stay fair because the calls are the same for both teams. The Fire Ferrets, being rookies, may simply have been to inexperienced to do this.
  • It's also possible that Amon had someone contact the Wolf Bats anonymously and tell them the judges were bribed; it was actually Amon who paid the bribes. The anonymous henchman could've just told the Wolf Bats he was representing someone who had bet a lot of money on their behalf. The Wolf Bats saw it as an easy chance to secure their victory, so they swallowed the bait. Amon's propaganda speech relied on the Wolf Bats cheating, so he had to make sure they actually did so.
  • Amon may not even have needed to contact the Wolf Bats at all. If he knew their style of play well enough, he could probably predict that they would escalate to blatant cheating if the referee allowed it, and he may have been counting on it.
  • It doesn't seem in line with Amon's character to "make" benders that are bullies. He punishes benders that are bullies just cause. His speech suggests this isn't the first time the Wolfbats have done this, and given how practiced they are, the possibility of them having cheated before is very high.
  • On the other hand, it is somewhat plausible that he knew the Wolfbats were bullies and put them in a position to prove it. Notice that Amon didn't mention the Fireferrets rallying valiantly without resorting to the same cheating. Kind of counterproductive to his message.
  • He does point out that the Ferrets were bullied, though. He compares the treatment of the Ferrets to how he believes benders behave on average. It's not really counterproductive to his message. "There are some good eggs" doesn't really defeat his argument that they're bad on the whole.
  • Alternatively, while they do cheat, they don't do it quite as blatantly. The ref's "bad calls" in the first match are relatively tame. He made a couple of mistakes and someone might pass that off as bad judgement. When the Fire Ferrets stayed in the game, the Wolfbats had to go to increasing lengths to win, and that is what outed them as blatant cheaters.
  • The damage to the team the Wolfbats faced in the semi-finals implies that they cheat even when they don't really need to. (Especially the damage to their masks, which seems to have come from their 'mixing peddles into a water whip' trick)
  • Another alternative is that it's all part of the show - the ref wasn't paid off, but the owners of the tournament deliberately rig it in the favour of the Wolfbats since they make good champions. They don't usually need to cheat, but the refs are instructed to look the other way on the few occasions they do, provided they can keep it relatively deniable. Their ridiculously over-the-top entrance is part of the whole showmanship thing they have going.
  • Unless you're talking about Pro Wrestling, competitors who cheat that blatantly tend to be unpopular. (Ex. Sammy Sosa's fall from grace, not from steroids, but from being caught with a corked bat.)
  • And yet the crowd still ate the Wolfbats up like candy when they won. The media just loves cocky assholes, their fanbases were secure.
  • Their cheating wasn't really very blatant. The hosing foul could be a judgment call, very few people would notice an earthbender bending a disc outside his zone, can spectators really tell if there's ice on the ring, the firebending headshots, the rocks in the water, none of these fouls could be spotted by anything more than a hardcore pro-bending fan. And while I'm sure there were more than a few angry fans in the stands that night, I'm not sure the laymen audience would have understood the nuances of all the rules of pro-bending.
  • The "laymen audience"? This wasn't some new, unheard of game that had just started and nobody knew what the rules are. Probending had been going on for a good long time. Hell, even Tenzin knows there's blatant fouls going on, and he's been brushing up on the game for, at most, a couple months. And this is the championship match remember, not just some pick-up game. The people in the stands are the ones who really want to see the game—some of whom are dressing up as their favorite players. Saying the "laymen audience" doesn't know the rules is like saying that the people in attendance at the Super Bowl wouldn't know what a false-start, facemask, or a block-in-the-back are.
  • We're forgetting the real issue at hand here. It doesn't matter if the Wolf Bats are cheating for the first or the hundreth time. It even doesn't really matter if the referees are turning a blind eye to just about anything the Wolf bats do. What really matter is that the radio announcer is one step removed from screaming to the entire city THE WOLF BATS ARE CHEATERS and that they dare to do so during an ultra mediatized event with at the very least one city councilor and the chief of police in the audience, both extremely respected figureheads AND descendants of legendaries war heroes and the friggin local messiah is playing in opposite team. I can't even start to imagine what the Wolf Bats were thinking. Heck, in a way, Amon's attack turn out for the better for them, since they go from "soon to be lynch-target for a very angry crowd" to "pitiful proofs of Amon's dangerosity". Not a single soul felt like punching them in the face like they deserved after their de-bending session.
  • The early calls being missed are actually pretty in line with Shinobi's reporting style. He writes of Korra's screw-ups in her first game as pure inexperience (an accurate statement), and when she used a grab and the a deluge of water to lift/drop an opponent in one of the later tournament games he writes it off as being worked up and adrenaline overriding her sense of control (it's a combat sport, defensive instinct kicks in eventually and the refs would call the fouls to wake them up to it). He does the same for the Wolfbats at first mentioning Tahno getting worked up with his hosing foul. Its when the Wolfbats don't stop and no calls happen that he starts calling it as blatant cheating, because normally when he notes something it becomes a foul (after all, if he sees it from far away the ref should see it up close), and with the occasional miss here or there. So it seems that a low level of cheating/fouls tend to occur regularly just from adrenaline and Shinobi's used to seeing that, but the Wolfbats crossed the line by doing it constantly and escalation. The reason it probably never got addressed after was because Amon showed up and they had bigger things to deal with than championship cheating (that, and the Wolfbats lost their bending). Now, why the refs allowed it to become that blatant (especially since Shinobi was screaming about the rocks-in-water trick or illegal headshots) is another matter. The stuff like the hosing foul could have been simply that in championship matches they loosen the judgment a little just for the spectacle, but for some reason they allowed it to become blatant. Hell, maybe the ref was an Equalist who was letting the normal escalation limit tests for championship matches go and didn't put his foot down. The Fire Ferrets never tested the waters themselves, Mako just automatically assumed that the refs were bought off.

Pro-bending waterbender colours

• This is a very minor point, but why do pro-waterbending waterbenders have a grey belt and head marking, rather than the blue which you'd normally associate with waterbending? You'd think that they'd want to keep grey available for when airbending populations have grown.
  • They'd have to rework the entire game for airbenders. They'd have a huge advantage, even with short bursts of air.
  • They look blue to me... not quite deep-sea blue, but still.
  • They are the same shade of blue as the Water Tribe clothes.
  • I have to agree with the 'they are blue' front. I also have to think that the people who organised the pro bending colors wouldn't be that seriously concerned with the idea that the colors (not to mention the entire structure of the game) would have to change to accomidate airbenders once they become more common in.... a couple hundred years or so.

Will it change?

• Now that Harmonic Convergence has created new Airbenders, will the game change to accommodate?
  • Probably not in the foreseeable future. There aren't nearly as many potential athletes to draw from.
  • Besides, if it does change, it might also have to accommodate non-benders. That said, maybe, many, many years down the line, there might be enough airbenders to justify making a version of the rules that includes them.
    • Why would it accommodate non-benders? It's called Pro-Bending... non-benders are excluded by definition.
  • Would it need to change much? They could just make it a four-player sport instead of a three-player one, and limit the duration of airbending attacks, like they do with the other elements.

Entertainment value

• One source I've found on pro-bending states that each round only lasts for three minutes or so, provided neither team gets knocked out of the ring before then...With only three rounds in each match, isn't that a little short for a sporting event? Who's going to want to purchase tickets and crowd into an arena just to watch a 10-minute bending match?
  • Who says they're watching "a" 10-minute bending match? There's the headliner match, but there might be preliminaries or exhibition or youth games beforehand. Same as with boxing — the big title match can be over in seconds, so they pad out the card with smaller matches so people get their money's worth.

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