ISB Ultimate Superfights: Round One!

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What, you thought I was kidding?

Daniel LaRusso. He had to take karate. He needed to take karate. Because if he didn't, a blonde guy with a Flock of Seagulls haircut and a headband was going to humiliate him in front of Elizabeth Shue.

Leroy Green. A man so obsessed with obtaining martial arts perfection that in the art of making love, he didn't even have a pencil. But though he journeyed to find the Master, the true power was inside him all along.

These two men represent the greatest non-Batman-related influences in my thought processes, and now, unlike some people, I intend to put an end to the debate that has raged since time immemorial.

Which in this case is roughly twenty-six hours.

Now my views on the Karate Kid are fairly well-known. But the Last Dragon is the single greatest motion picture that Berry Gordy ever produced. It's also the first movie I ever skipped a college class to watch--starting the spiral down to this lowly state at which you see me today--and I'll pop it in the DVD player at least once a month. In fact, I watched it last night in preparation to render my decision on the Titanic Tussle. Which is this:

Here's your first lesson, Daniel! How to take a fall! Bruce Leroy wins.

It's not a decision I came to lightly. And don't get the idea that it's going to be a one-sided fight, either. Daniel is the master of the Crane Kick, against which there is no defense, except that time in Karate Kid II where that dude just blocks it. It's a devastating maneuver, especially against a style like Johnny's that seems to be built around running face-first at your opponent.

Leroy, on the other hand, glows with the power of mystical kung fu.

That's pretty much the end of the argument right there. You're all right, LaRusso, but there's only one Master. Although I'm fully prepared to show, using a series of bar graphs and complex, irrefutable math, that Mr. Miyagi could totally beat the guy who trained Leroy.

A little anti-climactic, I'll admit, but it does open up a far more interesting battle:


Sho'nuff vs. John Kreese

This would be a battle that reverberated through a billion billion worlds, my friends. Shonuff has a more flamboyant wardrobe and far more intimidating followers, AND a pair of sweet Converse hi-tops, but Kreese... Kreese was in the 'Nam, folks. And I think we know what that does to a man.

Kreese would show his enemy no mercy. Mercy is for the weak. But Sho'nuff is the baddest mofo lowdown in this town. It's a tough call.

The only forseeable outcome is that they would team up, forming a martial arts juggernaut so powerful that only one man could stop it.

God help us if he runs out of liquor and dynamite.