As Rob pointed out, Yamcha didn't beat Goku and it's presuming too much to say he'd "definitely" win.
All we know if that Goku being hungry is what prevented him from instantly creaming Yamcha, but they otherwise looked about even.
And Tenshinhan won due to blind luck and tournament rules. Vegeta wouldn't care about that, especially when the only fights he's had with Goku he's either won or not finished.
edited 30th Sep '16 6:11:19 PM by Saiga
I think people like to give Yamcha the victory out of pity because he has so few awesome moments throughout the series. Even in the original Dragon Ball, he would kick ass while fighting mooks but would almost always lose against an opponent who actually had a name.
I think it's a shame that Yamcha's such a Memetic Loser, because he had a really cool character design. Toriyama invents a wandering sword-wielding desert bandit with a mysterious scar and a wolf motif and this is what he decides to do with him?
No beer?! But if there's no beer, then there's no beef or beans!Yamcha fans are also extremely bitter and spiteful towards Vegeta despite the latter actually saving the former from the Humiliation Conga that was his life. Throughout his career, Yamcha has primarily served two purposes: being a blood-filled punching bag for the villain to curbstomp and having a bitter, mutually-abusive relationship with Bulma that consistently made both parties miserable.
Then Vegeta arrived and he was such an unholy terror of an asshole that he promptly assumed Yamcha's duties as punching bag. Because it was SO FUN to see him get his shit wrecked. Because he deserved it more than anyone else in the cast. This is the point many fans bitterly refer to when they note that the humans stopped mattering: the point at which Yamcha and Tien stopped getting their spines ripped out by villains every arc because watching Vegeta get his spine ripped out was much more satisfying.
Meanwhile, Vegeta also got together with Bulma, permanently ending her on-and-off hatefest with Yamcha. Both characters moved on and, by the end of the Cell Saga, Yamcha has a new girlfriend and seems happy.
Yamcha stopped getting his arms ripped out of their sockets AND found satisfying romantic fulfillment for the first time in his life because Vegeta came along. He was the best thing that ever happened to Yamcha. Despite this, Yamcha's fans have never forgiven Vegeta for "stealing Bulma".
edited 1st Oct '16 8:10:09 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Is that what happened? I thought he eventually went back to living alone in the desert, never fulfilling his dream of getting married.
No beer?! But if there's no beer, then there's no beef or beans!Fans like to pass around that Yamcha died alone and unloved but the last we actually hear of it is when the wishes are being made to Shenron at the end of the Cell arc and Yamcha suggests that if nobody has anything they want to do with the second wish, he could use it on a present for his new girlfriend.
Yamcha's love life never comes up again after this point, as Yamcha is essentially a bit character in the Buu Saga due to the aforementioned "Vegeta taking over Yamcha's duties as the blood-filled punching bag" thing.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.That's....an interesting way to look at it. It's certainly not a point of view I've ever heard before on the matter.
I too re call Yamcha mentioning he had a girlfriend, though I doubt it was anything serious. He probably forgot about it seconds later.
One Strip! One Strip!Just gonna interrupt this conversation to say I'm in the middle of watching the new episode and I'm laughing harder than I have in a while from DBZA. I never thought someone taking Goku's brainlessness in stride would be funnier than people going insane trying to deal with it, but damn, Cell talking with Goku has done more to endear me to the character than almost every other appearance he's had previously.
but HOW?I know, right? After Goku's personality drove Vegeta and Freeiza to incoherent rage, a villain that gets him to the point of being fond of bantering with him about juicy stakes is both an amusing contrast and shockingly in-character. And I love Goku's own reaction to Cell.
I have a message from another time...Perfect Cell's face, while being that of Freeza's race, and having Freeza's eyes, has Goku's features.
Seriously, Perfect Cell is pretty much a transgenic, erm, Freezian, than an actual chimera. Down to the crotch shell.
That is definitely one of the best parts of Team Four Star. A LOT of stories like for their villains to be ominous beings of pure horror. They aren't allowed to be three-dimensional because they have to be constantly imposing, intimidating, terrifying every second that they're onscreen.
TFS has done a good job taking Dragon Ball's really one-dimensionally evil villains and making them actually feel like three-dimensional characters by virtue of simply letting them behave like people.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.It doesn't, but it takes a balance. You can't flesh out a three-dimensional character if every second of their screentime has to be devoted to being scary and evil. Good three-dimensional villains find opportunities to put down the Impending Horror mask for a few moments to emote in other ways and develop other characteristics. Loving one's kids, for instance. Or being a germophobe who interrupts his own villainous monologue to make sure his minion washed his hands on the way out of the bathroom. These humanizing moments are what make villains believable.
Sure, you can try to keep the abominable horror mask on while doing them and you can even get a great villain out of them, but not a three-dimensional one. Mayor Richard Wilkins was a three-dimensional villain because he had modes other than Infinite Evil. He laughed, he loved, he mourned betrayal. He was a person, and the audience could feel that because he knew how to put down the Villain Stick for a few moments here and there.
Bill Cipher, meanwhile, can be quite affable at times but everything he does is spliced with cosmic horror. You are meant to be amused yet horrified every moment that he's onscreen. When he does things like plucking all of a deer's teeth out to present to Gideon as a gift, offering Dipper a head that's always screaming, or rejecting an offer to join his forces by rearranging the orifices of a man's face, we see a wealth of personality and identity in it. And Bill is a great villain. But no one would ever claim he's three-dimensional.
...in more ways than one, actually.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.

2 things I really quite liked about the recent episode.
1: Trunks telling Gohan everything about his future self and what happened to him. Guess Cell's jab made him think about that.
2: the Handsome Cell joke. Not just because it was petty dang funny, but because it's a lot more tasteful and in-character a joke than they'd have made in season 1. They've come a long way from someone saying "gay!" as a joke in and of itself.
I have a message from another time...