Headscratchers / Punch-Out!!

• What always bothered me is that while the other boxers can cheat, you couldn't. It would have been cooler if you could pull off a kick or headbutt.
  • Little Mac seems to want to become the champ legitimately, and defeating cheaters says something about him.
  • As noted below, everything is defensible; no harm, no foul. Also, would Little Mac have the slightest idea how to throw an effective kick or headbutt? Probably just throw him off balance, if not hurt himself.
• So, Little Mac's allowed to fight anyone that steals his title immediately, but Mr. Sandman has to wait for Mac to beat 12 other guys before he can fight him again?
  • He probably spent time training to ensure that he wasn't beaten again, rather than immediately challenging Mac and getting another loss on his record.
  • This was a throwback to the arcade games. If you lose after winning the title, your opponent takes it (there is no scene of your guy surrendering the belt, however). If you continue, it's against the same opponent, just like any other time, and you DO get a repeat of jumping with the belt if you win.
  • How did Glass Joe get a shot at the title anyway?
    • The headgear. It made him far tougher than most of the other boxers are in their initial fights, arguably even Mr. Sandman. So he presumably started winning fights offscreen. This might also explain why the others all becomes determined to take their own levels in badass: "Shoot, even Joe is tough now. Got to get my act together".
    • Except, Glass Joe's record in Title Defense is 1-100.
• Okay, some fighters obviously have stage names, like Super Macho Man and Bear Hugger, and some have names which seem to be their actual names, like Don Flamenco or Von Kaiser. But what about Soda Popinski/Vodka Drunkenski? His parents couldn't actually have named him that. And is King Hippo actually the king of Hippo Island, or is he just called that because King Hippo sounds cooler than Citizen Hippo?
  • Alcoholism is hereditary. If the parents were drunks, maybe they named their son after what they loved most..
  • King Hippo is likely a nick name that he embraced, and Vodka Drunkenski? Believe it or not there have been worse names in real life, especially considering a family in Ukraine may not catch on the implications.
  • In Russia, "Power Station" and "Industrialisation" are girls names.
    • "King Hippo" is likely a title/moniker given to whomever happens to be the king of Hippo Island at a given time. And as for Vodka Drunkenski/Soda Popenski, it may be a nickname, or it may simply be his name. Indeed, wouldn't it be dynamite if it turned out that all the shit he got over his name turned to him developing drinking problems for real, creating a dramatic irony? Hey, if one of the in my sister's graduating class can be named Murgatroyd Rumplestiltskin (it's true, I saw the roster), any name is possible. My parents collect lists of comical unlikely real life names. Long, long lists. They could show you a pretty few: Helen Highwater, Dr. Miles Ovary the Gynaecologist...there are billions of people in the world, a few zany names are inevitable.
  • ...seriously? They're ALL stage names. Think about what Don Flamenco and Von Kaiser would mean in Spanish and German; it's the same as English boxers naming themselves Lord Of The Dance and The Emperor. Everyone's name is a stage name, even Little Mac.
    • Except Mike Tyson.
    • Don't forget Donkey Kong!
    • Didn't people make fun of the spelling of Aran Ryan's name? Odd that he'd be the one to go by his actual name.
    • Except that name is a pun on rye on air, which simply means just a straight shot glass of rye and no ice.
    • He's also, y'know, kinda crazy. The rage fuels him.
    • In Von Kaiser's case: In one of the promotional comics, one of his young students refers to him as "Herr Kaiser." Since "Herr" is the German equivalent to "Mister", "Von Kaiser" probably is his real name.
• If all the boxers are using the language of their native land, why doesn't Aran Ryan speak any Gaelic (Celtic?), or for that matter, why is Bear Hugger using a redneck-dialect mixed with english-speaking Canadian and no French?
  • While part of the core school curriculum, Irish is the first spoken language of a relative minority of the population. Thus they could just go with the more common and more stereotypical-accented English. Bear Hugger has a few things for the English. The main point and most important is that French is not commonly spoken in BC, Canada, the province given to BH.
  • French is only common in quebec. And he's talking like a canadian redneck.

• What happens if Aran Ryan knocks you down with his glove-on-a-rope in the second fight when he's falling down and you aren't being KOed or TKOed?
  • I haven't checked to make sure, but I hear that it isn't able to knock you down at all.
  • Correct, he can't KO you with it. You, however, can score a TKO on him if you punch him just before that final hit connects.
  • Even funnier in Champion mode (every hit knocks you down) when you can let it hit you and it will reduce your HP by half. Not only that, but if you recover this health while Aran's down on the mat, your HP bar will shoot back up to full instantly.

• Where the hell are the standards of the WVBA in allowing fighters in? Huge tall boxers and huge fat ones are fine since they can box (never mind the fact they are way out of your weight class) but then there's Great Tiger who blatantly uses illusionary magic, Dragon Chan who tries to KICK you (in Super Punch Out), Masked Muscle who both headbutts and spits in his opponents eyes, and then Aran Ryan who is a BLATANT cheater with headbutts, elbowing and a glove-on-a-rope WHICH THE CROWD AND YOUR TRAINER RECOGNISE? Aran has also assaulted the referee so being blind is no excuse.
  • The only standards boxers have to stand up to is backing off when their opponent is unconscious, and their hands must be covered by gloves. Like, obv.
  • To be fair, there probably isn't any official mention of magic use in the boxing rulebook, so the illusions could be handwaved with the Ain't No Rule clause. Not so much the kicking and the headbutting, though. Or the elbowing. Or the spitting. Or the quarterstaff. But then again, Mike Tyson wasn't immediately disqualified for trying to bite Hollyfield's ear off...
  • My pet theories (i.e. fan ramblings impossible to prove either way): Dragon Chan first did his kick in a moment of wild desperation and was disqualified for it, but it was made legal in later matches, mainly because the league was having financial troubles and they had to do something to spice up the product. Naturally, Bear Hugger, King Hippo, Great Tiger et al soon followed suit, and the rest was history. The general rule is that if that if it can be defended against, it's legal. No nets, tear gas shells, napalm, giant boulders, machine guns, etc. Hey, you got a better explanation for why Mad Clown always gives you an opening when throwing his balls, I'd like to hear it.
  • "Throwing his balls?"
    • Not brass, if that's what you were wondering, but plenty annoying nonetheless.
    • That's...actually damn clever! Good for you.
  • I always had similar theories. The manual describes Little Mac as (paraphrasing) "an opportunist taking advantage of the WVBA's loose rules" which explains away the lack of weight classes. From there I just assumed if people of vastly different heights are fighting you have to allow overhand punches, and if you're allowing overhand punches you may as well allow backhands, and double-fisted punches, and so on and so forth until you can bring in a staff. What bothers me more is that, if all this is allowed, why does Masked Muscle still need to wait for his cornerman to tell him the ref's not looking to spit in your eyes?
  • It's pretty much the premise of the game, isn't there a trope about having to accept this at some level...
    • I'd say MST3K Mantra applies best here.
• Apparantley a certain boxer was cut from Punch-Out!!!! Wii due to his: "inability to dissuade controversial material" I'm assuming that means he was too big of a Stereotype, which is really saying something. My question is, who was it? (I would guess it to be Pizza Pasta purely on account of his name)
  • My guess is Dragon Chan. He's one of the only boxers who feels more like a racial stereotype than a national one, and Punch-Out Wii was the only game in the series not made predominantly by Asians, the most likely white developers may have felt less comfortable using him.
    • Except Chan's look and style was an homage to Bruce Lee, so that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
    • True, just look at the Pokemon Hitmonlee
    • Maybe it was Dragon Chan's buck teeth that were offensive.
  • What about Bob Charlie? That guy must've been baked 24/7.
  • According to the punch out wiki it was Soda Popinski and this was later repealed. http://punchout.wikia.com/wiki/Soda_Popinski
    • It just says that people guessed it was Soda, considering the short time between the game's announcement and release it's unlikely that they informed the public that a character was removed, then had time to put him back in.
  • Well, we know for sure Kid Quick was considered to be in it before he got changed to Disco Kid. They changed him because they liked his retooling of him so much more, but maybe this was why they needed to retool him in the first place. He's not drawn all that sensitively, and since he didn't get a lot of other characterization...
  • It's been revealed that Princess Peach was originally the guest fighter, but decided to replace her with Donkey Kong, because of Unfortunate Implications.
    • Seriously?
    • Aw, that would've been the first female boxer in the series.
• Why is it no one knows what King Hippo's height is? Does he eat the tape measure? I know most of his stats in the NES Punch-Out!! were "???", but still...
  • I would guess that the weighing folks are afraid to go near him. He's too freaky.
  • I think the people of Hippo Island have no sense of time, hence his age is a mystery. Or length, so they don't know his height. Or weight, so he could be half a ton for all they know. The last one could just be that they stopped bothering when he broke one too many scales.
    • King Hippo definitely is shorter than Soda Popinski and is seemingly heavier than Bear Hugger, since the latter can get up rather easily.
• Is King Hippo even human? The guy has no nose, not to mention a physique that if any normal human had one he'd keel over.
  • And, as of the 2009 game, he sounds like a dinosaur.
• How is it that Title Defense Bald Bull can withstand a head-on charge from an actual bull, but can't withstand the Star Punch? If the Star Punch is supposed to be more powerful than a bull, then how come it hasn't killed anyone?
  • It's magic, we don't have to explain it.
  • Or, alternatively, consider this: Bald Bull initially had been training his head to be incredibly tough (i.e. bashing his head against things like the corner of the ring), but was defeated by Little Mac once the contender figured out Bald Bull's weakness, his stomach, especially during a Bull Charge. As a result, Bald Bull had been training rigorously to be immune (or at least recover) from regular punches to the stomach, as demonstrated by having a bull smash into him head on. What he didn't take into account was the fact that a Star Punch of any level actually hits the head, rather than the body. He even had been doing his "head shield" training a little less rigorously (hence only punching himself in the head, which is likely significantly less painful than headbutting a pole).
    • Long story short, TD Bald Bull had been conditioning his BODY to withstand powerful hits, but not his HEAD, thus Star Punches can effectively knock him out.
  • When he goes down in Title Defense you can tell he stumbles disorientedly and falls on his face, where his bull training only prepares him for falling in a very specific fashion (backward, with his feet flat on the ground). It's not that a star punch hits harder than a bull, it just hits differently, and that's enough.
    • Or it's magic, whatever works.
  • Maybe Mac's punches are just that powerful.
• Von Kaiser is a washed-up has-been who gets beat up by the little kids who attend his boxing academy. Okay, fair enough...but then why does he have a starting record of 23-13, which is better than the likes of Bear Hugger and King Hippo, who are 18-10? Why are Bear Hugger and King Hippo both ranked higher than Kaiser, if they have worse records, and if Kaiser is such a sissy to begin with, how did he ever get his wins in the first place?
  • The implication I got is that he was a skilled boxer who won a lot before he ended up getting beaten by a student. That's when he went into his current twitchy PTSD form and had a long losing streak, moving him down the ranks quickly.
    • This raises another question then. How in the seven hells is Disco Kid actually ranked higher than Von Kaiser? His record is below .500 and I can't even imagine how that works? And related to this, Piston Hondo has a near perfect record, yet Don Flamenco is the champion of the Mayor Circuit whereas Hondo is contender No. 3. The World Circuit makes a bit more sense with its rankings, but you can't help but ask how they'd even rate the fighters in the previous two circuits.
    • It's simple: Disco Kid beat Von Kaiser, and Don beat Hondo at some point. They advanced up the ranks in much the same way you do - considering you can advance up the ranks without having a good record, but by beating the next contender.
    • Actually it can't be that way, because if you see Mr. Sandman's intro for Contender, he is beating Piston Hondo up. This means that Piston's defeat came from Mr. Sandman and not Don.
    • I guess that Don was simply already around before Hondo entered the Major circuit. This way Don was able to rise to the top of the Major circuit without having to fight Hondo.
  • Or he boxed a lot with Glass Joe for free wins. The poor Frenchman must have got his 99 losses from somewhere, after all.
  • A simpler explanation is that Von Kaiser is 42. Unless you're Hoy Quarlow, chances are you don't have it in you to take on younger, fitter competition anymore. He was probably a great fighter once, until his age caught up to him and he slipped down the rankings.
• I've always been a little bothered by King Hippo's inability to keep his trunks up. They fall down every time Mac punches him in the gut, which leads me to believe that they're pretty loose fitting. Now, answer me this; where in the hell did a guy like King Hippo find a pair of pants that were too big for him? You'd think he would have enough trouble finding a pair that was big enough for him.
  • They were custom made when he entered the WVBA, and he's lost a bit of weight since then. Now try to imagine him being even fatter.
  • Alternatively, his trunks were too small for him and after wearing them for so long, the elastic has been repeatedly stretched over and over again to the point where there's no tension left in them to hold them up properly, hence why they fall down so easily.
  • This leads to another Headscratcher\point of amusement - King Hippo goes through all the trouble of duct-taping a sewer-plate to his belly, but doesn't go through the trouble of putting on a belt.
• Just what the hell is the Head Gear made of? It makes Glass Joe's head invincible! Glass Joe!
  • Nintendium, of course!
  • Adamantium? Vibranium? Unobtainium?

• Aran Ryan's horseshoes are inside his gloves, closer to his skin than yours due to the padding in his gloves. Wouldn't they be more painful to him than to you like that?
  • He's a masochist. It probably does and he doesn't mind.
  • The horseshoes also appear to be in front of the padding, just under the outer material.
• One of the many posters littering the Minor Circuit advertises a match between Don Flamenco and Soda Popinski. Since Don is the Major Circuit champion, this match is likely an attempt to get into the World Circuit, but if that's the case, doesn't he have to fight Aran Ryan first instead of skipping straight to Soda Popinski? Are the other boxers not subject to the linear progression that Little Mac is?
  • Given Aran Ryan's reputation as an Ax-Crazy, Jerkass Combat Pragmatist, it's possible Don doesn't want to challenge out of either hate or fear.
  • Considering there's an Exhibition Mode where Mac can do exhibition matches against any former opponent without his title at risk, one can assume anyone else involved in the WVBA can do the same, and that Flamenco vs. Popinski is one of those matches.
  • Alternatively, since it was in the Minor Circuit, and both contenders are not involved in the Minor Circuit (Flamenco being the champion of the Major Circuit, and Popinski being #3 in the World Circuit), the poster is just very old, and was made when Don and/or Soda were involved in the Minor Circuit, starting their own careers.
• How can Great Tiger, with literal magic powers, lose to anyone? Its not like the WVBA actually cares about cheating (which begs the question, can you actually cheat?), and with Great Tiger's teleportation and astral projection powers used to their full extent I don't think even Mr. Sandman could take him. Certainly the likes of Don Flamanco to Super Macho Man couldn't/shouldn't.

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