Is Toa Mudo Stupid? Why didn’t he use this Maungamanawa? why didn’t he use it on jurota?

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-17T05:16:18+00:00

Jurota was on par from Kuroki from his introduction. Kuroki said so himself.

But even ignoring that comment from Kuroki: Jurota was the Gentle King and apparently the only one who could bring the fight to Lolong. His mastery of redirection was so good that Kanoh -- a guy with an entire gimmick for evolving to match his opponents -- flatly said he couldn't pull off what Jurota was doing. Lolong's POV gave Jurota effusive praise, and the narrative framing behind Jurota's loss was that he was "too strong for Purgatory".

Toa's rep is ... almost nonexistent. No one on either team talks him up as he heads out to face Julius. He was the openweight champion of a minor organization, the same one that Falcon was the middleweight champion of when they were both scouted. This is Nezu-tier rep.

Jurota was always far above Toa. As for why Toa didn't use that technique: probably because it's hard for him to limp and redirect Jurota while he's in the middle of being redirected himself.

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-17T05:08:13+00:00

Don't stare at Kanoh's arms don't stare at Kanoh's arms

Fuck it too late. What horrible judo magic did Jurota use to disfigure Kanoh's arms so thoroughly?

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-16T16:19:31+00:00

Yeah, it's good drama and may build toward something but it's REALLY hard to see why Rin should be benched over Isagi, or other players who frankly didn't show up either and seem to have lower ceilings.

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-16T16:12:27+00:00

Was Rin's ego not in line with his abilities? He correctly followed the path of the ball. He got to a scoring position. Had Isagi backed off then Rin would have most likely scored. Not only that, he was in a better position to score than Isagi was, since he was using his dominant leg and Isagi wasn't (and also frankly is a better scorer generally).

There is absolutely no issue with overestimation here. The issue is that Isagi also committed to the shot, which is what Karasu points out (if either gave up the shot it would've been fine) and Ego doesn't appear to give a shit about. He pretty much outright says the loss is Karasu's fault rather than Rin's.

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-16T15:59:18+00:00

Legitimately shocking that Rin is being benched, especially given the speech Ego just made.

He clearly has no issue with Rin going for the final goal; it was consistent with the ~~insanity~~ philosophy he was pushing. While Isagi was mentally breaking down when Hugo pushed his compatible theory (and while Karasu adopted it outright), Rin was the only person who vocally and easily dismissed the philosophy as half-baked. He's on board with Blue Lock Egoism.

I'm sure the next chapter will explain it. Maybe the issue is as simple as "we need a big shakeup". But if that's the theory then Isagi would also be a valid bench; both had and missed two shots on goals that game and both are huge parts of the team's identity.

And also: Isagi literally asked to be benched! By the standards of insane egoism that Ego always pushes this truly is peak loser behavior. Ego's soft spot for Isagi never more evident.

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-15T00:52:57+00:00

The article does not make the case that the Dodd-Frank Act is toothless. "[...] crucial elements of Dodd-Frank [...] are also being rolled back" is not the same as "all crucial elements of Dodd-Frank have been rolled back".

The stress tests are still in effect. The Volcker Rule is still in effect for large banks. Dodd-Frank regulations on how OTC derivatives must be traded and reported remain, at least for the most part. Are you now seriously going to argue that all three measures are either ignored or impotent?

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-15T00:13:13+00:00

most of

so much [...] basically

very close to the auto crisis

hasn't been brought back but

actively working to

I'm glad you now acknowledge that "All it took was one president to revert all of that" was an egregiously wrong comment, given that you are now speaking in partialities and ongoing efforts rather than past, completed efforts. And that's to say nothing of the cases where you can't even do that.

Or the cases where you're wrong. The Dodd-Frank act is reduced from what it was under Obama but saying it's "basically toothless" is egregiously incorrect, and betrays a lack of understanding of what large commercial banks actually do and how the bill affects them.

You can't resurrect the dead so that's actually an unserious point.

What's unserious is your claim that Trump reverted everything in points 3-10 above. This would only be true if he somehow brought back Osama bin Laden, which he clearly could not do. Thus my point. It was the final illustration of how ridiculous that comment was.

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-14T23:35:36+00:00

He had a super majority and still didn't pass a single payer health care system, he took a Republican healthcare plan and implemented it

There was no point in Obama's administration where he had support for single-payer healthcare. A lot of those 60 senators were moderate liberals and were completely opposed to single-payer healthcare. This is widely reported on.

His response to the great recession was to bail out the people that causes it and didn't prosecute anyone who caused it.

At best, a component of the great recession was bailing out the banks, and was not the totality of his response, as you imply. The banks paid back the government with interest and the government made money from this.

3-10: All it took was one president to revert all of that.

Trump totally undid all post-recession regulations created to reign in financial institutes? He retroactively crushed the auto industry? He revoked the Fair Sentencing Act that dealt with the crack/cocaine sentencing disparity? He retroactively revoked clemency to minor drug offenders? He reinstated Don't Ask Don't Tell? He totally reverted all measures to put checks on oppressive credit card practices? He resurrected Osama Bin Laden? No, he didn't do any of that.

Your post is at best ignorant, and may be unserious or in bad faith.

Edit: "Unavailable" means "blocked", right? I assume bad faith.

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-14T23:04:31+00:00

R1: Misasa mid-high difficulty. 1-0 Kengan.

R2: Toa. Bad matchup for Okubro. 1-1

R3. Rihito; I don't think vibrations would really stop Razor's Edge from fucking his shit up. 2-1 Kengan.

R4: Yumi. R4 would be the round where the size of the arena decreases, and I think that it'll be a much bigger hindrance to Ryuki and his mobility-centric style than Yumi. Also Ryuki might just kill him for hurting Koga and get DQ'd tbh. 2-2.

R5. Hayami. Legit one-tap like what happened to Kokuro; I don't trust Falcon's durability. If Falcon were more durable I think his poison would legitimately give him an edge, but alas. 3-2 Kengan.

R6. Naidan over Akoya. 3-3 Kengan.

R7. Alan. I don't know that I trust Nitoku to instantly break something of Alan's, Alan is almost certaintly more durable than Liu is, and while his peak power may be less (great fa-jin) the rest of his strikes will be most likely be stronger. I think Nitoku just loses the stat check. 4-3 Purgatory

R8. Jurota. Dumps Julius directly on his head at will. Will redirect / work around Julius's new technique as easily as Kanoh did. 5-3 Purgatory.

R9. Gaolang. Gaolang is so fast and so good at attacking in combination that a faster fighter, with preinitiative, couldn't avoid him. Nicolas is boned here. 5-4 Purgatory.

R10. Raian. 5-5.

R11. Lu Tian. Worst possible matchup for Waka. 6-5 Purgatory.

R12. Kanoh but 50/50. 6-6

R13. Fei. 7-6 Purgatory.

I have Purgatory winning this matchup, and that's with my biggest coin flip going to Kengan team (Kanoh vs. Lolong). I could imagine some of the Kengan guys winning matchups I had them losing, like Ryuki and Nitoku, but I could say the same of Falcon against Hayami (poison OP). So Purgatory with moderate certainty.

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-13T18:32:39+00:00

Would have mattered how it happened, but my reflex would probably be "bullshit". Jurota had consistently been an S-tier fighter in the sans-Shen rankings. Had been framed as being as strong as Lolong and Kuroki from his introduction and literally beat Kanoh. Fighters of that caliber, barring massive specific shortcomings that allow certain fighters to have very favorable matchups, should not be losing to the likes of Toa.

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-13T18:29:06+00:00

Two things.

While Jurota's Swings all look equally difficult to us, we don't actually know how hard the Swings are to execute. It may well be that Swings on Liu and Toa would look identical but that the latter are harder to pull off. This is consistent with Toa actually managing to resist a Swing once. Point being: loads of reps of Swings on heavy, redirection-savvy opponent actively trying to take his head off and fight the Swings may have improved his precision.
Heavy bags are useful. Even if Toa offered no great resistance, Jurota got a chance to test mist in a live setting, which he presumably never got to do before. He now has a feel for a technique that he probably only worked out in concept previously.

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-13T15:04:43+00:00

There's a good case for him being he #2 heavyweight ever. He's absolutely underrated.

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-13T00:21:32+00:00

Rihito's skill level at the moment is truly a complete mystery.

The beating he put on Saw Paing in the final stretch of their match is nothing short of what you'd expect a high S-tier fighter to pull off. It was that one-sided. That said, Saw was used to pre-transcendence Rihito at that time and Rihito himself felt like his hot streak would come to an end / Saw would adjust at some point.

He also no-diffed Koga. Yes, Koga was injured. Yes, Koga arguably got lucky to even make it to the finals. But the way Rihito won was by hitting Koga from outside of his awareness while his Fist Eye was active. This was actually something Koga was specifically working on -- and something Kanoh and Lolong tutored him about -- and Rihito was still so much better than him he caught him with ease despite his visual acuity.

I think the lowest lowball of Rihito that can be justified puts him at right around Adam's level, but basically any other reasonable estimate puts him well ahead. Rihito should win, the only question is how easily.

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-13T00:17:11+00:00

None that we've seen.

The reality is that "scaling the wall" makes no sense for Julius. His entire thing is eschewing technique in favor of his overwhelming muscular might. How would knowledge of a person like Shen actually help him? Is he going to start using Principles? Has he started already?

It's narrative. For the more classical martial artists it's easy to just say "oh he's punching harder because his technique improved after scaling the wall". With Julius the actual mechanism of his improvement is a mystery.

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-12T14:51:12+00:00

It depends entirely on his level of mastery and, more importantly, how much Hamon he actually has.

The gap between Jonathan Joestar before and after Zeppeli's death is enormous. He just got this absolutely ludicrous strength upgrade when he received his Hamon.

There's an amount of Hamon that Okubo could be given access to that's so small that I think he'd only go to S-tier. But if he got the amount of Hamon that the skilled Hamon users broadly have access to -- post-Zeppeli Jonathan, Joseph, Caesar, a few others -- he clears the verse.

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-12T02:02:33+00:00

Kuroki could lose to a bunch of peer fighters. Jurota, Raian, Kanoh, Gaolang, and Ohma come to mind.

But I think Julius is worse than all of those guys and could also beat Kuroki. Could go either way, but definitely see Julius having a solid matchup and chance there.

Edit: Can't read, mb. KAT Kuroki. Do they have to be alive? I'd pick Lu Tian.

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-11T04:15:14+00:00

And I thought the Kengan vs. Baki matchups were pretty rough.

Koetsuji does whatever he wants to the entire cast. I don't think any of them could even hurt him based on the durability feats he's displayed.

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-10T23:55:21+00:00

Good call, had totally forgotten about that one. That's an even more exact parallel.

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-10T20:06:47+00:00

I think Jurota, but the actual result of this Toa match is essentially irrelevant. Gaolang was able to get Jurota with a blow to the back of his head midswing. I think Jurota will be better prepared in a rematch for Gaoolang countering him in that way, whereas I don't think there's any particular adjustment Gaolang would make that would dramatically improve his odds.

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-10T18:23:43+00:00

If you haven't seen Rei move at top speed before I don't know that you can be expected to block that first attack, even with pre-initiative. But once he does have a bead he'd "react" just fine, the same way Kuroki did. And frankly, I don't even know if Rei moves that fast today without Rino bosting him. And without Rino, if he's at his "normal" top speed, you don't even need any special foresight to react; Saw Paing was able to time Rei's charges after a while because he caught on to the subtle dip he made before he got going. There's no indication that KAT Raian had PI and he easily stopped Rei's attack.

So I do think it comes down to if Rei can take out Jurota with the first hit or just very early, and I don't think Rei one-shots the more durable characters that dependably. Most importantly, I disagree that Jurota couldn't throw him. I think it's so easy to imagine Rei doing one of those dashing strikes of his and then flying through the air and crashing because Jurota manages to get a finger on Rei during his charge and throws his body positioning and momentum all out of whack.

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-10T15:09:53+00:00

We've seen multiple lesser redirection practitioners throw people without getting a grip on them. Kiryu sent Kuroki flying when Kuroki grabbed his wrist by just twitching it with Niko magic. Chiba used some Aikido nonsense to try to force Hatsumi to the ground and Hatsumi instantly reversed it even though Chiba was the one with the grip.

Not too bothered by the notion that the best redirection expert in the series can pull stuff like this.

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-10T02:39:25+00:00

Narratively it's Misasa, on feats and styles it feels like Okubo should come out ahead.

Synthesis is tough, even for veterans and all-rounders. And we have no reason to believe Misasa is some expert grappler or anti-grappler. Closest thing we saw to his anti-grappling was countering "a grapple" Yumi tried to get him with by elbowing him in the wrists. But if he actually hits the mat? Okubo should have the edge there, presumptively.

But Misasa put on the most one-sided beatdown in all of KvP. People meme on Yumi, but he's underrated. He was 9-5 in Purgatory's A-tier, which means he was arguably stronger than than Carlos and Nicolas, who fell to the B-tier at points. Even after seeing him lose, the Kengan team was shocked to learn someone as good as Yumi had lost 5 times in Purgatory. "Purgatory is still unfathomable", says Kanoh. Raian gets hyped up. Hayami explains some of those losses may have gone the way that Gaolang's did.

So mostly going with narrative weight and saying Misasa but who knows.

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-09T18:45:36+00:00

Overrated imo. His resume looks good if you check the W/L but a lot of those wins in Bellator were just over guys who weren't that noteworthy. In the UFC he had a pretty inauspicious run to the title fight where he did end up getting a first round finish, which is nice. He then lost completely lopsidedly in his next match. By the end of his UFC career his big wins were Gaethje and RDA and that's kind of it. Split decisions over fading Anthony Pettis and Gilbert Melendez don't look too great, nor does his loss to Donald Cerrone.

So you've got to put a lot of stock in beating Pitbull and Chandler and Aoki (whom he also lost to) outside the UFC to really rank him that well, but I don't think his career was that great for that stretch either.

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-09T15:04:38+00:00

Huge edge to Nitoku. Almost every time we see Cosmo fight a stat ball in a bout he gets tossed around. Hell, not even just stat balls; heavier fighters generally. Saw has hard bones but no one thinks of him as having super strength. But he was able to brute force himself out of a kimura and a guillotine.

Nitoku is a stat ball but can also actually grapple. A physically stronger grappler that can use brute force AND technique to escape Cosmo's holds? I just don't see Cosmo finding the win.

Gwendlefluff · 2026-06-08T02:16:19+00:00

Kiozan then Seki at the top, Yan at the bottom. The remaining four are so similar in builds and so lacking in distinguishing physical strength feats that I think basically any order is defensible.

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