Fight by Baron Karza. Check out his stuff here!

Joe Palooka vs Yu (The boxer)

 

I’m sure almost everyone in the DB community has a favorite boxing match-up that they would love to see. For many it’s Little Mac vs Ippo, for some it’s Rocky Balboa vs Daniel Larusso, for a smaller group, it’s probably a matchup between some fighting game characters. For like one person in the entire vs community, it’s Joe Palooka vs Yu from the Boxer. Now you’re probably wondering who these characters are. I guess I got to briefly explain to you uncultured swine who these are. Well Joe Palooka is the titular protagonist from the comic series of the same name, his series went from the 1930s to the 1980s, so he’s been around for quite some time. Yu is the protagonist from the boxer webcomic. I’ll give you a better idea on who they are later.

 

Connections:

Both are the protagonist’s of boxing comics

Both characters are naturals at boxing

Both character’s initially became boxers to help a friend

It’s got an east vs west theme

It’s got an old vs new theme

Joe detestes violence, while when Yu was asked if he wanted to become a boxer, he asked if hitting people is fun.

Joe is heroic character while Yu is more of an anti-hero

 

Animation Potential

 

I think the animation potential could benefit if it emphasized the contrast between Joe and Yu’s fighting styles. Joe is a big brawler while Yu is a speedy outboxer who lands incredibly precise hits. He fights like Nintendo Unity plays punch out.

 

Set-up

 

Once again the set-ups write themselves, don’t you just love it when that happens. It’s just a boxing match plain and simple. Yes I know there is the problem of Joe being from the 1930s and Yu being from the modern day, so realistically speaking if these 2 ever met Joe would be roughly 90 years old since he’s 16 by the beginning of the series but let’s ignore that.

 

Actual Fight

 

Now I don’t have a specific idea but I think in the beginning we should have a visual of two giant mountains next to each other but we don’t know which is bigger. This is a reference to a common visual in the boxer. In the end of the fight we see which of the 2 mountains is the bigger one with the winner standing on top of the mountain. 

 

Banter 

 

I think what could really make the dialogue of this fight shine is Joe manager, Knobby Walsh, and Yu’s coach, K. Knobby actually cares for Joe like a son, whereas K, as far as I know, doesn’t care for Yu in the same way. Rather seeing him as something to inflate his ego. So I think that it will be cool in the first few rounds, Joe is taking one hell of a beating Yu, Knobby begs him to throw in the towel but Joe refuses. When Joe finally lands a blow on Yu, we see K’s smirk wipe right off his face as what is essentially his masterpiece shatters in front of him. As the fight progresses, Yu starts seeing something in Joe’s persistence, ‘the light’ as he calls it and starts testing his drive to continue (see also Takeda Yuto). And when the fight ends, we see the winner, all beaten and bruised, and we see something very similar to this iconic scene from Rocky. 

 

Music

 

I’m a little sad to say that I don’t have any idea how the music would be since both of the characters are comic characters. Both have music associated with them, just watch the trailer for the boxer webtoon and listen to music from the Joe Palooka movies (there are a lot more than you think), but the problem is that they are incompatible with each other’s characters and I don’t know how anyone could combine them. I mean yeah ‘Balderdash’ exists but leans more on Saitama’s side then Popeye for music 

 

Who Wins

 

If you couldn’t tell from earlier, Joe wins, though this is going off from what I’ve read, I haven’t finished the boxer and I am far from finishing Joe Palooka. But though Yu may be the faster of the two, Joe just has him beat. He’s much stronger, being able to send people flying with a casual punch and he knocked out a bear. He is incredibly durable too, being able to survive being in a plane while it exploded, even if you consider that an outlier, he should still be able to tank hits as strong as his own. His time in the military also put him through some intense situations giving him the stamina advantage. Even after all these years Joe is still the champ of comics.

 

Otto’s Comments

 

This might be the best fight Karza’s ever done.

 

I know some of you looked at the matchup and went HUH? I know, because that was my first impression. But now I really, really like this matchup and its theme.

 

I bet most of you don’t know who Joe Palooka is, but he used to be big. Really, really big. He might have even been more popular than Superman, Popeye, Bugs Bunny, and Captain Marvel during the 40’s. He had films–plural. He had a radio show. He had a mountain in Pennsylvania named after him.

 

His comic strip started in 1930 and continued for 54 years. At its peak, it ran in 900 newspapers which was incredibly good in the days before cable.

 

Joe Palooka was so popular that when he married his sweetheart Ann in 1949, his creator Ham Fisher sent out engraved invitations to a list of celebrities as a joke. They read “Mr. Ham Fisher requests the honour of your presence at the marriage of Ann Howe to Mr. Joe Palooka on the afternoon of June 24th in your favorite newspaper.”

 

And several sent formal acceptance. Including General Omar Bradley.

 

So who does Joe fight? He fights the closest thing he has to a modern version. The age of the comic strip is long gone. Now we live in the Korean dominated age of the webcomic. And the icing on the cake is that Yu makes a great contrast with Joe. He’s this (relatively) tiny guy known for speed and precision. He’s an extreme introvert, every bit as shadowy as Joe is bright and outgoing. Joe cares about the sportsmanship of boxing while Yu is selfish, in the game only so that he might understand the optimistic “light” of his rival.

 

Muwah, chef’s kiss, 10/10 matchup.

 

As for the music, I say lean into the contrast. One moment it sounds like modern arena rock to represent Yu, the next moment its an old-timey orchestra to represent Joe. During the fight, have the characters change whenever they get punched really hard. Yu turns cartoony and Joe turns mangay….mangaey?

 

I didn’t know how it looked until I typed it…

 

As for who wins, yeah I think Joe has Yu’s number. While he was never as cartoony as so say, Popeye, he inched toward that a bit with punching people so hard they go flying and surviving airplane explosions. Plus, dude was  soldier, and went on a series of pulp adventures across the planet. He’s been in life threatening situations the likes of which Yu can only imagine. He’s more than just a boxer. He’s a Palooka.