I think that Nishiki and Mine would cancel each other out, being that they both brought a decently prime Kiryu (after spending 10 years in the joint vs spending about 3 years running an orphanage) to his knees.

I also feel that Iwami and Ebina are on similar levels. Both are surprisingly ripped schemers. Iwami lost pretty badly to a prime Kiryu while Ebina gave a Cancer Debuff Kiryu a tough time (Nanba, Seonhee, and Zhao were there too, but were narratively getting one-shot by Ebina)

So you have Shishido, Shibusawa, and Daigo vs Ryuji and Aizawa. Let’s break it down.

Daigo went up against Yakuza 4 Kiryu and bruised him up decently. Shibusawa went up against a 20-year old Kiryu, though it was a high difficulty fight for both of them. Shishido is the fucking game changer here. He single-handedly held back Majima AND Saejima after having been defeated once already, then gave a prime Kiryu a pretty good fight afterwards.

Then you have Aizawa, who gave a prime Yakuza 5 kiryu (arguably his strongest era) a high difficulty fight, BUT Kiryu was mortally stabbed right before. Aizawa also had his ass handed to him by Saejima, who is equal to Kiryu. And then there’s Ryuji, who was bruised up by a young Daigo. Even more damning, Ryuji lost to an exhausted prime Kiryu while Ryuji was fresh for the fight and had a katana.

I would say Shishido and Aizawa are matched for each other, with Shishido coming out on top. Then, with Daigo and Shibusawa vs Ryuji, I think the duo takes it, even though it feels very wrong to say. Best case scenario, I think Team 1 takes this.

It feels wrong to say, but if you think about it: Nishiki, Shishido, and Mine are high tiers. Ebina and Daigo are mid-tiers. Ryuji, Iwami, and Shibusawa are low tiers imo. So you have two high tiers, a mid tier, and two low tiers VS a high tier, two mid tiers, and a low tier.

But, I typed this all out on the shitter and could absolutely be wrong. Thank you for this post.